Page 114 of Things We Do in the Dark
She hates the way her voice sounds, small and timid. It’s like she’s nineteen again, hoping to find a place to stay, armed only with a duffel bag and the cash she stole from Maple Sound, facing Drew in that shitty little basement apartment kitchen with the checkerboard floors, crossing her fingers that he’ll see past his preconceived notions since it’s clear he knew who she was. Only now, it’s Drew standing in her decidedly not-shitty kitchen, and she’s still hoping he’ll see past everything he thinks he knows and allow her to explain.
Drew steps forward slowly, his hands up. When he’s a couple of steps away from her, he reaches forward and carefully takes the cleaver out of her hands, and places it in the sink. He then lets out a sigh of relief. As if he actually thinks she might have whacked him with it.
In fairness, she did consider it for a split second. But that’s because he surprised her, and she was panicking.
“You faked your death?” Drew says. “Are you fucking serious?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’resorry?”
She looks up at him. He looks down at her. She forgot how tall he is. There are specks of rain on his glasses. She doesn’t know what to say, other than to apologize. If their positions were reversed, she would be angry as hell, too. And in this moment, standing in front of him, his body less than two feet away from hers, she suddenly can’t remember why she did it, why she ran, why she ran away from Toronto, why she ran away from him.
Drew is waiting for her to say something. She needs to say something. Anything.Goddammit, speak.
She bursts into tears.
He steps forward and wraps his arms around her, squeezing her tight, and he feels different but the same, and he smells different but the same,and as terrified as she is that he’s found her, he’shere, and she’s glad. She feels his lips brush her hair. He breathes into her ear as he speaks slowly and evenly, enunciating every word.
“I am so fucking mad at you.”
“Are you hungry?” Paris asks.
He chuckles, as if he knew she would ask that, and nods. “Starving. Last thing I ate was seven hours ago.”
“I’ll fix you a plate,” she says. “There’s beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”
She sticks a few rolls oflumpiain the air fryer, then putters around the kitchen. She fills a plate for him, and then a plate for herself, scooping freshly made rice out of the cooker before spooning a generous amount of adobo on top.Pancit, too. It feels good to have a task that allows her to be busy so she doesn’t have to look at him while she compiles her thoughts. She can feel him watching her, and is suddenly aware that she’s wearing the oldest, baggiest sweats she owns, her hair in a loose, messy ponytail. She pulls two beers out of the fridge.
She can’t decide whether to tell him the truth, or some of it, or none of it. She sets his plate down. He takes a bite, chews slowly, then nods. “It tastes just like I remember.”
They eat in silence, the two of them darting looks at each other between bites. It feels awkward and familiar at the same time. He hasn’t changed all that much, though there’s a softer thickness to his body now, the kind that comes with age. There are a few lines around his eyes and mouth that weren’t there before. His hair, cut short, is still mostly black, with only a hint of gray at the temples. She wonders what he’s thinking about her. His face has always been hard to read.
She reaches for the ball cap sitting on the table beside him and examines it, running her finger along the embroidered Raptors logo.
“Think they’ll ever win a championship?” she finally asks, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” he says. “You ever think to call and say, ‘Hey, Drew, guess what, I’m not dead’?”
She puts the hat down. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I couldn’t ask you to keep that secret.”
The air fryer dings, and she gets up to retrieve thelumpia. She serves them with a store-bought sweet chili dipping sauce.
“I cook when I’m sad,” she says. “You know that.”
“I’m sorry about your husband,” Drew says. “I heard on the way over here that the murder charge against you was dropped. Still, do you mind if I ask—”
“I didn’t kill Jimmy,” Paris says. “The official cause of death is undetermined, but we believe he died by suicide.”
“‘We’?”
“The people who knew him best,” Paris says, and leaves it at that.
“I’m sorry,” Drew says again. “I understand you’re grieving, but I grievedyou.Do you understand that? For nineteen years, I blamed myself for your death.”
