Mrs Johnson was wrong. Her husband wasn’t grappling to swallow the same reality as she was. Instead, aside from feeling the increased seriousness of the situation, Robert Johnson was feeling much the same as he had felt when Aria had first disappeared. He was trying to stitch together the two sides of himself that hoped to rip him apart. One part of him felt the guilt and doom of knowing that he was the real reason she’d left. He feared his fate because of it. He hated himself for it. Aria had been more accessible to him and more open to his affections than Mrs Johnson had ever been. He knew it was wrong, but it also felt so right and special that the wrongness failed to prevent it.

He knew that self-blame was selfish. But it drowned out even the grief at her loss and the worry that he had for her wellbeing.

The other part of him felt immeasurable relief that Aria had run away. He did not trust himself when she was around. When she was there, something about her seduced him into a state of possession. It both excited and terrified him. He could not control himself. The fevered pleasure of their secret time together was always followed by the feeling that he had sold his soul to the devil. He hated walking through the doors of church, knowing that God wasn’t fooled by him and might never forgive him for what he had done. He felt hypocritical singing the hymns. Even though every person in the pews was facing forward, he could feel their fingers pointed straight at him. He hated crawling into bed with his wife like a dog with his tail between his legs, knowing that if she ever found out what he had done, what he had caused Aria to suffer, their life together would be reduced to shredded paper on the floor. He would lose everything.

And so the two of them sat there on the couch with the dance of the cartoons in pixels on the screen, their children fixated on it, Clifford in his new monogrammed collar, asleep on the arm of the couch. Two separate lives under one roof. A living arrangement called a marriage. It was a sham, a game of pretense. They could feel that sham peeking through the visage of their lives. It did not compel them to action. Instead, it froze them both where they were seated. Waiting without waiting.

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7

A string of boutique shops lined both sides of the street. Any time one of their doors was opened, the unique scent of the store boiled out. One of these shops was a restaurant that was open for both breakfast and dinner. During lunch, they would prop open their door and welcome anyone who wanted to eat there for free.