Evan came in carrying the bag of food Claire had asked him to buy. He set it on the kitchen table and looked at the unfilled pot on the stove.
“You haven't started.”
She shook her head.
“Show me.”
He followed her into the workroom and stood behind the chair. Claire turned the screen so he didn't have to look past her. His gaze moved to Graham first, then to his own hands.
For a while he said nothing.
“Tomorrow?” he asked.
“Afternoon.”
“That's the stair.”
“Yes.”
He bent closer. Claire wanted to stop him looking, though she had called him here to do exactly that. There was something unbearable about the real man leaning toward a possible version of himself who might have done the thing she feared.
“He's bleeding,” Evan said.
“I can see.”
“I meant me. There's blood here.” He pointed near the wrist, then lowered his hand. “I don't know whose.”
“You could stay away.”
He turned toward her.
“From the preview,” she added.
“I understood.”
“If you aren't there, it can't be this.”
“If Graham isn't there, it can't be this either.”
“I can't make him stay away.”
“Of course. Ask the man who's standing in your workroom.”
She sat down, then rose because she couldn't bear looking up at him. “I'm asking you not to get hurt.”
Evan rubbed the uninjured side of his face. “I'm not the one on the ground, Claire.”
Claire looked at the image again. She knew he was right about the limits. She knew the mirror and the hotel had changed. Those facts did not make the blood less visible.
“You said you wanted him to face you,” she said.
“I do.”
“You said part of you wanted him to come.”
“I remember what I said.”
“Then tell me this isn't what you want.”
He looked back at the screen. His jaw moved, then settled.
“I want him to be the person who can't stand up and walk away for once,” he said.
Claire went cold.
He saw it. “That isn't the same as deciding to put him there.”
“It doesn't feel far away.”
“To you.”
“To you?”
He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I don't know. That's the truth. I don't like looking at that and knowing there's a part of me that doesn't feel sorry for him.”
Claire put her arms around herself. The room was warm; she felt cold anyway. The man on the screen might be helping. The man beside her could admit wanting Graham brought low. She could not make one cancel the other.
“Please,” she said.
He turned away from the screen. “What do you want me to promise?”
“That you won't hurt him.”
“What if he grabs her? What if he hits someone else?”
“Then help them.”
“You want a sentence with none of that in it.”
“I want you to be able to come back here afterward.”
He looked at her, then down at the space between them. His mouth softened.
“I want that too.”
She came closer. He let her take his hand. It was clean, with a dark line beneath one nail from the day's work. She kept looking at it until he lifted it out of her gaze.
“Stop,” he said softly.
Claire looked up.
“I'm here now.”
She kissed him. He kissed her back. He put his hand at the base of her neck. For a few seconds she let the touch give her what the picture could not, a real body still capable of wanting and warmth.
When he drew away, she said, “Stay tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“We could decide in the morning.”
He looked toward the screen. “You've decided.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She had wanted him in the bed so she could wake beside a man who would agree with her. She'd imagined asking again in the morning, her hand on his chest.
“I don't know how to stop being afraid,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
He stepped back. The distance was small but deliberate. She wanted to put the whole room between them and the image, turn it off, make dinner, behave as though the evening had not been invaded. That would not remove what she had asked.
“I'll be there tomorrow,” he said. “Beth asked me. I want to be there.”
“Even after this?”
“Yes. I can know it's possible without letting it tell me I've already done something.”
Claire nodded, unable to agree in the way he wanted. She knew he could make a choice. She was terrified of which choice.
He went into the kitchen and opened the grocery bag. Tomatoes, pasta, a small block of cheese. He put the cheese in the fridge and left the rest on the table.
“Eat,” he said.
“You're leaving?”
“I can't stay while you look at me like that.”
She stood beside the kitchen doorway. He had put food in her house, a thing so ordinary it made the leaving worse.
“I don't think you've murdered him,” she said.
Evan looked at her. “You had to put murdered into the sentence.”
She looked away.
He took his keys from the table. At the door he stopped, his hand on the latch.
“We don't know he's dead,” he said.
“I know.”
“Try knowing it while you look.”
He went out. Claire remained at the kitchen table with the uncooked food. After a while she grated the cheese, then realized she had nothing ready to put it on. She boiled the pasta and ate standing at the counter. It tasted of salt and nothing else because she hadn't put the tomatoes in.
In the workroom, the image waited.
She sat down and looked as he had asked. Eyes shut. Blood. A man kneeling. His hands were bloody. She wanted them against her skin; he had left food in her kitchen and gone.
Claire closed the image. She opened the ordinary photographs of Vivian's wedding instead.