How strange to hear my wife speak so casually about murder, even if it was a game. She turned to look at me, seemed to read my thought.

“You do understand I’m joking?” she said. “Cal? Or do we not make jokes anymore?”

I looked at her as she sat, rolling the stem of her glass between forefinger and thumb. Something about her had changed. There was a purposefulness to Elsa these days—though surely it had come gradually and imperceptibly—something decisive and hard, and sharp as new-forged steel.

I should have asked her. The question was a simple one.

What did you do today, Elsa?

Instead I went out, angry and confused. I went to a bar with a stage where Mark Steiner & His Problems were playing. The songs were slow and melodic, the guitars full of discord and Nordic pain: “Insomnia’; “Fortitude’; “Sea of Disappointment’; “Don’t Explain.” With your voice of gravel and honey, I thought, you could be singing for me.

Beside me a woman leaned in. “Guy can really move.” The warmth of her breath on my ear. Her dancing eyes.

I nodded. She must have caught the look in my eye.

“Hey,” she said. “Why so sad?”

I had no answer to that, though we sat and we talked for hours on the steps outside. If Elsa had been watching, I know she would not have liked it. And when we parted, I felt her fingertips lingering on mine and wondered if this was an invitation to something more.

But I love my wife, so I headed for home.

Vee found me on the terrace. She looked at the cigarette butts that littered the soil of the planter, at the bottle of gin on the table in front of me.

“I can’t get back to sleep. You woke me up when you came in.”

“Sorry.” I put an arm across her shoulder, and we sat, father and daughter, looking out from our strange oppressive apartment into the black trees and the purple hills beyond. The night was at its darkest, though there was color in the sky. A cat roamed the long grass behind the apartment building, blue-gray and shadowless in the grasses below the trees.

That expectant look on Vee’s face, all fired up.

“What?” I said.

“Dad, can I show you a thing?”

But she was already on her feet and out of the room.

She returned, carrying a bundle neatly wrapped in a dishcloth. She placed it on the table in front of me, sat down opposite me, watching for my reaction.

The corners of the cloth were folded into the middle.

“Did you go searching among your mother’s things? Because that’s an abuse of trust, Vee.”

“So wake her up and tell her . . .”

I lifted a corner, felt fabric drag across the object inside. Something heavy and dark and metallic. I unfolded the cloth, corner by corner.