He stuffs himself into the folds of our white couch. His black denim stains the Italian leather, but I don’t say anything about that. Not now.

“I feel like shit,” he says.

I find a place next to him. “What happened?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says, drinking. It’s a big gulp, and I know he’s on his way to getting drunk. Stress is a big trigger for Connor. It has been that way since the day we met. I don’t pretend to know everything that goes through Connor Moss’s head, but I’ve been with him long enough to dissect his personality with a modicum of astuteness and accuracy.

He’s thinking. His mind is knitting together what happened in SoCal more than a decade ago and the tragedy at Hood Canal over Memorial Day weekend. One involved a car. The other a stranger abduction. The events are not similar at all.

However, one thing is, and I know just what he’s going to say.

“I lost time,” he says.

“You were drunk,” I remind him. “You were almost killed.”

He takes his eyes from mine.

“Right,” he says—ironically, as he drinks more.

I give him more tequila. I have a glass too, but I mostly shift my ice cubes around. I’ve never cared much for drinking. I’d seen how it ruined my parents’ marriage. Of course I’d pick a man with a similar issue. Even with my bachelor’s from Seattle U and a JD from the University of Washington.

Intelligent me.

“But, Kristen, the blood,” he says, “I don’t know how the blood got there.”

He glances at me, then back at his drink. He looks like he might cry.

“Honey, you cut your finger at work,” I say, though unconvincingly. “You thrashed around in the bed. I could hear you from the other room. You were pretty drunk. You bled. No big deal, babe.”

“But you were gone that morning. I was in the cabin.”

“That’s right,” I say. “You were dead to the world, and I went on a hike. That’s it. That’s the story.”

He studies his empty glass.

“Is it a story?”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t know what you mean.”

His eyes are pools of anguish. “The blood,” he says. “My shoes.”

He’s never mentioned it before. I didn’t bring it up. But, yes, his shoes were peculiar. When we went to get dressed to go to the sheriff’s office in Shelton, I watched my husband study his shoes for a long time. He seemed perplexed. They had sand from the beach stuck to them, and when he picked them up, particles sifted to the hardwood floor.

“Weird,” I’d heard him say. “I don’t remember going outside.”