You wake the way you have woken for four years, reaching for the edge of the bed before your eyes are open, because darkness taught you that routine matters more than sight. Then light comes through your lids and burns, and the ceiling resolves — the long crack over the window, the curtain breathing, dust turning in the air — and your own hands are in front of your face, trembling, resting where they rest every morning, over the curve of your stomach. You are crying before you decide to.
In the hall, his voice, low and unhurried, in the tone he keeps for other people.
"Not now. She's asleep, and she sleeps through anything. I'll call you in the morning."
He comes up still in last night's black three-piece, jacket over his arm, collar open, hair wet and pushed back from the rain. He does not put the lamp on. He crosses the room in the dark without touching anything, the way he learned this house when you could not, sits on the edge of the mattress, and smells of cold storage, of banquet wine, and of a perfume that is not yours. You keep your eyes shut. You have not decided yet what to do about any of it.
"Still asleep,"
he says, to himself, and two fingers brush your hair back off your forehead and stay there.
"One thing before you wake up,"
he says.
"You had a headache at nine, you came up early, and you did not hear the car. That is the whole of last night. Say it back to me when you're up."
He leans down and presses his mouth to your hairline, then takes your hand and folds your fingers into his and holds on, the way he has every night for three years, waiting for you to open your eyes and forgive him.