But all it meant, really, is that I was too far gone to come back to normal yet.

Blessed relief and release when dinner was over and we could go our separate ways for a couple hours. Once or twice, doing the dishes as inadequate penance, I opened my mouth to say something to my husband, sequestered in the living room with a glass of strong red wine. Then I would close it again. Futile. What would I tell him? About being fired? About wildlife traffickers. About a hummingbird, a salamander.

We migrated to the bedroom, with sullen, unreadable daughter off to her room. Something in her eyes: if we talked again, I would need better answers. I remember feeling relief: that my lie meant she wasn’t ratting me out or writing me off. Whereas my husband suspected nothing. Or did he?

Wired to the moment, to the present tense, as I brush my teeth, put on my pajamas, as he flosses and puts on his boxers, takes up the half-read newspaper and grunts in satisfaction at his fullness from a dinner he didn’t have to make. No questions from him, just the usual routine. While I’m making a conscious effort to take deep breaths, to be some semblance of calm.

Then I crash into the world again and I am no longer light, no longer able to keep it all at arm’s length. Have to strangle a scream.

Surely he will notice? But he doesn’t. He sits up in bed reading until it’s time for sleep. Until we turn the light off and lie there on our separate sides.

He’s snoring soon enough. But I can’t sleep. I can’t even begin to think of sleeping. I’m wired like a race is about to start, like a match is about to start, like a fight is about to start.

I rise up rise up rise up. The clock reads two in the morning.

I tiptoe best I can, seeming thunderous to my ears. To the closet, to put on some clothes, quietly go downstairs, retrieve Shovel Pig, take out the gun, close the front door behind me.

[61]

I needed to screw up my courage first. “Dutch courage,” Shot would’ve called it. For what I planned to do. I kept telling myself it was stupid. Then finding ways to convince myself. This would be it. The last lead I’d investigate. I’d do this thing and Silvina would be out of my life. Whatever I found, whatever I’d already discovered that might be valuable … I’d send it anonymously to the authorities, to wildlife protection organizations. Whatever made sense. Then I’d find another job in the security business. Or somehow beg Alex to take me back. Like my old life just waited there, patiently, for me to inhabit it again.