Henry looked at the paper again. The article said Mr. Miller was dead. A heinous crime. A second body, a young man, Thomas James Cooke. Both dead inside the cabin.

“Henry.”

She wore the silk robe he’d given her ages ago: long, pink, to the floor.

“Henry, what do you remember?”

Outside the birds were going wild, they loved the spring morning.

“Henry?”

“I remember you coming home. I remember being in the car.”

“And then?”

“That’s it. That’s all.”

“You must be repressing it,” Claudine said. “That’s supposed to happen with shock.”

“What did I do, Claudine?”

“You were very brave.”

“Tell me what I did.”

“You went in yelling. Fighting. Protecting me. You pushed him. He stumbled back and fell. He got up and slugged you. Your jaw must be sore, a real one-two.”

Henry touched his jaw. It felt fine, but Claudine was right. Shock. His entire body was numb.

“Then he grabbed his shotgun,” Claudine said. “Before he could raise it at you, you grabbed the nearest thing you could to protect yourself, to protect me. A statue from the mantel.”

This couldn’t be happening to him.

“I tried to get you to stop after you hit him the first couple times. I was screaming at you to put the statue down. But you wouldn’t. It was like you were in a trance. I’m sure that’s why the other man came—all the screaming. He must’ve come back to the house between when I left the first time and when we returned. He came running out of a room in the back. He must’ve been asleep because he was just in his underwear. He saw the gun on the floor and went charging for it. You didn’t have time to think. You grabbed it and pointed it at him and pulled the trigger. You didn’t have a choice. You understand me, Henry? You didn’t have a choice. He would have killed us. We would be dead right now. You saved us.”

He was horrified. But he was even more horrified that he felt a punch of pride. Never had he thought he was the type of person capable of killing another human being. He had risen to the occasion. Defended her. You think you know yourself. How you’d react in a situation, but then your true nature takes over and you become someone completely different. That’s the real you. Not someone—something. An animal. An organism. There is no reason, only reaction. In a situation like that, he would have guessed he would have run or just froze. He was a drunk. And a cuckold. That’s how he saw himself. But he wasn’t. He was a fighter. A survivor.