It was just so easy.

As if everything had wanted to come apart.

There was probably some law about that.

Order giving way to chaos.

Marcella took up a dishcloth and wiped the dust from her fingers as another raucous laugh cut through the house. Then a familiar voice called out.

“Doll, where’s that drink?”

Marcella followed the voice down the short hall that ran between the kitchen and the den where the men were playing.

“Where the fuck is my drink?” bellowed Marcus, chair scraping back. He was on his feet when she walked in.

“Hello, boys.”

Marcus didn’t have to feign surprise, since he’d expected her to be dead. His face drained of all color—what was the phrase, oh yes: as if he’d just seen a ghost. The other four men squinted through the haze of liquor and cigar smoke.

“Marce?” said her husband, voice laced with shock.

Oh, how she longed to kill him, but she wanted to use her bare hands, and there was a table between them, and Marcus was holding his ground, looking at her with a mixture of suspicion and worry, and Marcella knew what she had to do. She began to cry. It was easy—all she had to do was think of her life, the one she’d worked so hard for, going up in flames.

“I’ve been so worried,” she said, breath hitching. “I woke up in a hospital, and you weren’t there. The cops said there’d been a fire and I thought—I was afraid—they wouldn’t tell me if you’d been hurt in it.

They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

His expression flickered, suddenly uncertain. He took a step toward her. “I thought you were dead.” A forced stammer, a mockery of emotion. “The cops wouldn’t let me see your . . . I thought maybe you . . . what do you remember, baby?”

Still the pet names.

Marcella shook her head. “I remember making dinner. Everything after that is a blur.”

She caught a glimpse of hope in his eyes—amazement, that he would get away with it, that he could have the best of both worlds: killing his wife and getting her back.

But instead of coming to her, he sank down into his chair. “By the

time I got home,” he said, “the fire trucks were there, the house was up in flames. They wouldn’t let me in.” Marcus slumped back, as if reliving the trauma. The grief. As if ten minutes earlier he hadn’t been playing poker and waiting for his mistress—her one-time friend—to bring him his drink.

Marcella went to her husband, circled behind his chair, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’m just so glad . . .”

He took up her hand, pressed his lips against her wrist. “I’m all right, doll.”

She nestled her face into his collar. Felt Marcus actually relax, muscles unwinding as he realized he was in the clear.

“Guys,” said Marcus, “game’s over.”

The other men shuffled, about to rise.