Page 30 of Blind Spot
I looked at him across the table. “Not tonight,” I said.
“Rook.”
“The reporter is part of this. Give me a few days, and we’ll talk about all of it.”
He stared into my eyes for a second. I braced. Then nothing.
“Okay,” he said.
He picked his fork up and took a bite of chicken salad.
“Heavy on the tarragon again,” he said. “One of these days I’ll hide the jar and see how long it takes you to notice.”
I sat there with my hands flat on the table.
Theokaywas wrong. Five years, and I’d never once known him to let go of something important. He’d stay on it. This mattered, and he set it aside like an empty beer bottle.
Varga didn’t flinch. The flatokaywas louder than anything else he could have said.
We finished eating. He cleared the plates and rinsed them, talking the whole time.
“Rafe’s done. Did you see him out there? Legs like a newborn deer. He’s not going to survive the next road trip, Rook. We’re going to lose him somewhere over Pennsylvania, I’m calling it now.”
I killed the lights over the sink. He checked the bolt on the front door.
We climbed the stairs. Varga was ahead of me. I watched the easy roll of his shoulders. Then he paused, for only a second, before continuing up the last steps.
Our bedroom was half-dark, with only a sliver of light from the hall. Varga’s nightstand held its usual clutter: three phone chargers, a cold coffee cup he’d carried up two days ago, and the little carved bird from his grandmother that went everywhere he did.
My side had a lamp and a book. After five years, the room still split exactly down the middle, his side and mine, and most nights noticing that was one of the best parts of my day.
Tonight the room was too quiet.
We got ready for bed how we always did, except we did it without a word. We brushed our teeth and traded places at the sink the way we had a thousand times. The toilet flushing was loud in a house that was usually full of us talking.
Varga kicked off his shoes by the closet, one and then the other, and I heard each of them hit the floor. He slipped into bed on his side, and I turned off the lamp.
The rest didn’t happen.
On most nights, Varga reached for my hip and hooked a leg over mine. It was the cue for me to move closer.
Tonight his hand stayed where it was, and the foot of space between us stayed twelve inches wide.
He rolled over toward the window, his back to me. I lay there and looked at his body.
I didn’t read anger. If it were there, I would have understood, but he didn’t yank the duvet or square his shoulders. He rolled over like a tired man.
Five years ago, Varga lay on a rented couch with a wrapped knee and his hand open on the blanket, palm up.Stay,he’d said. I stayed, and I never left, but now there was distance, a cool slice of air between us.
It scared me.
The furnace kicked on under the house. Varga’s breathing slowed and evened out. I lay on my back and listened to it.
I gave up at four a.m. Moving slow to not wake Varga, I stood and went downstairs. My gut didn’t want coffee. I reached for the tea his mother had sent in the fall. I couldn’t read the Hungarian words on the label, but I filled the kettle and turned it on.
I stood at the island and thought back to year one.
It was a Tuesday in February on a road trip. We were in Buffalo. A brutal snowstorm canceled our flight, and we had a night to kill. Somehow, Varga found a dive bar open. We trudged through foot-deep snow while the rest of the team huddled in our hotel. They were too busy watching weather reports to know we were gone.
