I could hardly listen. I watched his face, his hair, his eyes, his hands. The way he breathed. His mouth.

They got married when he was thirty.

She wanted a baby. He didn’t.

He hadn’t really even wanted to get married.

They’d been living apart since before Bee was born.

“Bee?” I asked him.

“Like a bumblebee,” he said.

“Like a birdie,” I said.

“Or a bear,” he said, getting closer.

I thought it, or rather saw it in my head, the sentence, typed out and lit up, but it was Bear who said it aloud: “We belong to each other.”

We sat on the bed with the dog. I had never finished the basement after I hid the gun and uncovered the photos. After I smashed my face into the wall. I had a tender spot that would turn green in a day. I’d left the basement half done, partially masked, the coat uneven. I started upstairs instead, painted a gray bathroom, a green bedroom. I asked Bear to explain the business to me. I asked him what else he had done, what he had kept a secret.

“It’s my mother’s company,” he said.

He was such an adult to me, I had never even imagined him with a mother. Or a family. I stopped him.

“Are there more of you?” I asked.

He laughed. “There’s only one of me,” he said.

I stumbled. “I mean, you know, brothers and sisters.”

“No,” he said. “Just me, and my mom, who took over my dad’s company after he died.”

“Do you work for her?”

“Sort of,” he said. “I invest her interests.”

“Right,” I said, faking it. I’d been making seven dollars and fifty cents an hour for four years.

“It’s a complicated web of transactions right now.” He pressed his lips together.

“Is that the secret?” I asked. “That you don’t really work for her? It’s just like, money?”

“No,” he said.

“What is it?”

He took his hand from mine and tucked his hands between his knees. “I got in trouble as a kid,” he said. The dog stretched between us, his frog legs out behind, his head ducked underneath a pillow.

“Legal?” I said. I couldn’t imagine him committing a crime. Stealing. Why would he steal? Then it occurred to me. I could imagine him raping someone. I thought about the power he held when he leaned over me. I held my breath and waited.

“Yeah,” he said, “although nothing ever really came of it. So,” he said. “I don’t have a record.”

“Were you arrested?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but it was all expunged.”

“What happened?”

“I got in a fight,” he said. “The summer right before I went to college.”

“That’s it?” I said, waiting.

“No,” he said. I watched him blow out a long breath. “The other kid died.”

“How?” I yelped. “From the fight?”

“Yeah,” Bear said.

“How?”

He seemed to hold his breath. I had never seen him stressed, not even when Meghan was there. And I wasn’t sure he was now. He might be pausing for effect. But I was on edge, listening to the story, waiting.