“Hannah,” I edged toward her, scraping my elbows on the ground. “What’s wrong?”

She stared up at the sky. “Sometimes, after Mommy goes to bed…” Her chest rose, and she gulped for air. Between sobs, she managed to squeak, “Daddy comes into my room and lies down with me.” She swallowed and whispered, “He touches me.”

I wrapped my arms around her, resting my chin on the crown of her head. Her face pressed into my chest, I continued to name the types of trees visible from our vantage point on the forest floor until she cried herself to sleep.

Chapter 75

Jack and I notified our landlord that we’d be moving out at the end of the month. I had decided to stay with William until I figured out what to do next. I didn’t tell Jack where I was going; I wanted him to wonder and, with any luck, worry. He didn’t tell me where he was going either, but I knew.

We packed our things into boxes in silence, speaking only when absolutely necessary.

“Do you want this?” Jack pointed to the burgundy fringed lamp we’d purchased at a yard sale on one of our road trips. I thought it resembled a lamp from a boudoir. I used to pretend we lived in a speakeasy, cheekily whispering in Jack’s ear about the cocktail specials before hiking up my skirt to flash him my garter belt.

I shook my head. I didn’t want anything that would remind me of him or our life together. Hoping to rid myself of every possession, every memory, every scrap of evidence that I had ever known him, I kept only the bare essentials. Everything else went into the garbage.

On the day of the walk-through with our landlord, I met Jack outside the house. He seemed so different from that night we had met almost six years before. He was older, there was no doubt about that. No longer in his early twenties, his face had lost its youthful plumpness. His eyes seemed a darker green, almost ocean-blue, with high cheekbones protruding below. I tried to picture the last meal we’d had. We used to love to cook together. Playfully, he’d spank me with a spatula, and we’d end up fucking on the kitchen floor.

“Finally moving on, folks?” our landlord called as he approached.

I shielded my eyes from the sun with my right hand, faking a smile. “Yeah.”

The landlord tugged at the rim of his baseball cap, the beak angled over his forehead. “Let’s get inside and have a look.”

We wandered through the house, in and out of each empty room, the destruction and chaos invisible to the landlord’s eye. I’d spent a few days plastering holes in the Gyproc and scrubbing the floors, spraying everything with bleach to rid it of the smell of cigarette smoke and dope. The landlord examined the area for damage and cleanliness as I remembered everything that had happened between these walls. I kept trying to catch Jack’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me.