Keep This Quiet: One question, asked on her own gravel

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Tuesday. The kitchen, seven in the evening.

He came in with his own new key, set it on the island square to the edge, then walked past the stove.

He sat down. At the kitchen table, in his jacket, at seven in the evening. She had never once seen him sit before he cooked.

"The county rang me at four," Daniel said.

She kept her hands where hands live, the bound one on top.

"A hospital two hours south has told them my wife is not safe in my house. That a friend of hers was pushed on my stairs. That she's being kept." He said it evenly, a man reading out a number. "They're sending someone Friday at noon to ask you. I'm to stand where he can see I'm not answering for you."

"Who told you that part?"

"He did. He was decent about it. He says it's a form."

The refrigerator ticked over. He looked at his own hands on the wood. Then he looked up. The opened thing was in his face, the one from a dock, with no file behind it.

"I have never asked you a question I didn't already know the answer to," he said. "You'll have noticed. It's the worst thing about me."

"I've noticed."

"I'm asking one now." His voice had dropped half a register, into the place that was only ever aimed at her. "Are you? Safe. With me."