Archie sat on the floor, leaning up against the mauve wall in a bathroom on the first floor of the hospital.

He held the phone in his lap, rereading the text. “DARLING, FEEL BETTER?”

Archie put his head in his hands. Two years had passed and his ribs still ached from where she’d broken them. They probably always would. He moved his hands to his neck, and felt the length of the scar there, his freshest scar, two months old and still tender to the touch. Then he reached under the waist of his shirt and moved one of his hands over his older scars: the one that ran up his midsection, the smaller scars on his flank, and finally the heart-shaped reminder on his chest.

His mind turned to the butchery at the rest stop.

She would not stop killing.

Archie picked the phone up and pressed the top of it against his forehead, digging into the skin until his skull felt like it might split, and his head cleared. Fuck it.

He sat up and punched in a text. “Where are you?”

He hit send and waited.

The toilet was beige with a mismatched white seat. There was a handicap grab bar next to it, and a hook to hang a purse on, and a feminine-hygiene-product waste receptacle. Archie looked up at the ceiling. White corkboard panels. A smoke detector. A sprinkler valve. Two white air vents were layered with years’ worth of dust and grime. No one ever bothered to clean up there.

He glanced back at the phone. Nothing.

The rose-tile floor gleamed, even though the grout was brown. There was a round silver drain in the middle of the floor.

Someone rattled the handle of the bathroom door.

Archie looked up, startled. “Occupied,” he called.

The phone vibrated. He looked at the screen. “Do you miss me?”

Archie stared at the phone, calculating how to respond. A thousand options flew through his mind. He needed her to show herself. He needed her to think he was still in her thrall.

There was a knock on the door. “Just a second,” Archie said.

A small brown house spider crawled out of the drain on the floor and scurried over the tiles toward the sink.

Archie typed, “I WANT TO SEE YOU,” and hit send.

An hourglass rotated on the phone screen. Then popped out of view. Message sent.

He looked up at the door, stood, flushed the toilet, and then held his hands under the faucet sensor to turn on the water. The countertop was speckled peach and black Formica, the same color and pattern that Courtenay had dug into her neck. It had probably come off the same roll.

Archie checked the phone. The only thing on the screen was the time: 11:23, 11:24, 11:25. He dried his hands with a paper towel and threw it in the gray rectangular trash can. A caricature of a lady skunk stared down at Archie from the Aire-Master air freshener.