He walked through the house room by room the way he walked model homes after a storm—inventorying damage, testing what still worked. In the bedroom closet Sondra's work blouses hung in a neat row. On the dresser sat the wooden bowl where they dropped keys and receipt scraps and the occasional leftover Halloween candy. Two sets of keys were still there. One set would leave with her tomorrow and return Sunday, or not. The uncertainty felt like a draft under a door.
In the guest room he found nothing dramatic—no note, no forgotten watch—only a faint indentation on the quilt that might have been a body or might have been his imagination working overtime. He stripped the quilt anyway and carried it to the washer. The machine's churn became the loudest honest sound in the house.
Scout followed him from room to room, nails clicking, a witness to routine trying to reassert itself. When Reggie finally sat, the dog brought him a toy—a battered stuffed squirrel—and dropped it on his shoe with ceremony. Reggie threw it once down the hall. Scout retrieved it. They did that four times, then stopped, because even comfort had a limit and the night was long.
His phone buzzed. Cheryl: You alive?
He typed: Alive. She's at Nia's for a few nights. Scout and I have the house.
Cheryl: Good. Sleep in the bed if you can. Couches lie about being temporary.
He almost did. He walked into the bedroom, saw the dent in her pillow, smelled the faint vanilla, and walked back out. The couch took him again. Scout curled against his knees.
Outside, Maple Court settled into its polite dark. Somewhere a garage door closed. Somewhere a television murmured through a window. Reggie lay awake and catalogued the life he thought he had: the jacket on the hook, the dog's bowl by the fridge, the marriage that had looked, from the street, like every other marriage on the block.
He had not been a saint. He had been a man who confused being needed at work with being present at home. She had not been a cartoon of betrayal. She had been a woman who mistook being seen by the wrong person for being saved. Franklin had not been a sneering villain. He had been a tall man with a glass of water and a jacket on a dining chair and the poor judgment to believe loneliness was an invitation without a cost.
None of that made the hallway less ruined.
***
Thursday he worked a double because the new model on Cedar Spur had a slab leak and Summit wanted it invisible before the weekend traffic. He came home after nine smelling like wet concrete. Scout greeted him like a person who had been counting hours. The duffel was still gone. The house was still too quiet.
He showered. He stood under the water until it ran cool. When he came out, he found a note on the counter in Sondra's handwriting that he had somehow missed that morning, tucked under the fruit bowl:
I put clean sheets on the bed. Not a demand. Just an option. —S
He stared at the note for a long time. Then he left it there and slept on the couch anyway, because options were not the same as readiness.
Friday morning Evelyn Stokes was at her mailbox when he walked Scout. She saw him and stiffened, then forced a neighborly nod.