Cole came toward me. His face was full of ugly rage. His chest looked strange—rigid—and his arms robotic. For one quick moment I thought he was reaching for a knife on the counter. I could see it shining there in the light from the bulb over the sink. But then I realized that what looked like reaching was a reflexive motion, an involuntary pulling back. His arms swung behind him, tensed, fists clenched, the veins in his wrists popping—his shoulders, elbows, everything pulled back as if an invisible presence were holding him back while he strained to come at me.

He didn’t need a knife. If he wanted to hurt me, he could do it with his hands.

“Do not,” he said, “talk about Emily.”

“No one thinks you did that to her. I—I don’t believe you pushed her—”

“Didn’t push her? Of course I pushed her,” he said. “But it wasn’t me pushing her, do you understand?” He looked at me intensely, glanced down at his hands, and then back at me. “It was my hands,” he said. “But they were just tools, the way we’re all just tools. It was Divine Justice. She was a bitch of a liar being punished by the great hand of the universe. It was the tides moving her toward that punishment. Because you know what? I loved her with every ounce of my being, and she never loved me, not really. She kept secrets. She held herself secret from me. That’s not what love looks like.”

He moved toward me again, coming around the table.

“Everyone gets the punishment they deserve,” he said. “I looked down at her, so helpless at the bottom of the stairs, and I was glad. I thought she was dead. I hoped she was dead.”

“She’s still alive,” I said.

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t keep track?”

Naturally he kept track. He was a puppeteer, holding all the strings at once, twitching this way and that while we went through our routines. I wondered how he monitored her without being found out. But there were more pressing things to worry about now. His arms were still behind him, elbows locked, fists awkwardly out. I backed toward the door.

“Lucas will be home any minute,” I said.

“You think so?”

I found the kitchen door behind me. The knob.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said.

I’d never seen him like this, with something in him set loose, called forth by the name of the girl in the bed.

Then I thought, If her name calls out the monster, maybe his name calls back the man. I knew his name, but I hadn’t said it out loud yet. I’d been waiting to know how to use it.

This was how.

Help him find his better nature.

I said it softly.

His name floated through the kitchen.