He had taken off her clothes, jerked her arms out of her sleeves. She opened her eyes to see him as he was pulling back the blankets on his bed. She felt the heavy tug of sleep again, the blankets, the thick heat of Jules’s hands cupping her buttocks, the way her teeth chattered even in sleep.

“Jesus,” he said. “You could have died out there.”

She heard him in the morning as he was leaving but he did not say good-bye.

Charlie Kicking Woman SEEING

I wasn’t a drinking man. Whiskey made me sputter. I didn’t need a drink that night. I drank like a sick man drinks medicine, a tonic to help me sleep. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t shake Louise’s words, that I could have helped Yellow Knife. I was responsible for Yellow Knife’s death. Maybe I should have thought that was a good thing. I was ridding the world of a nuisance, a killing man who would have eventually killed. I told myself I had saved Louise, but I had told myself that so many times I no longer believed it.

I looked around the room and saw only Aida’s belongings, the things I hadn’t thought to store away. Her hairbrush rested in the medicine cabinet beside my shaving cup. I looked at that brush, stroked the stray hairs that remained. Aida’s hair. Her favorite coffee cup hung from a hook in the kitchen, plain and unadorned. Simple. Easy, like the life we had had together. I had been wrong. I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, why I had been so determined to chase after Louise and forget my own wife. I sat down on the chair beside the woodstove. The heat made me sad and sleepy. I could feel heat pooling in my chest, a heaviness I couldn’t carry. I got in my truck and drove.