She didn't answer. She said she would tell him, she swore she would tell him everything, but not tonight. She asked him please, not tonight. She said she was afraid of what would happen if she told him tonight.
He turned around then. He looked at her in the green, wavering light, and it took him a moment to understand. She was afraid of him. She thought he would get in the truck, drive to wherever this man was, and do something that couldn't be undone. That understanding landed in a different place than the rest, somewhere lower and colder. In eleven years he had never raised his hand or his voice to her. He had come home from two earlier deployments and been gentle, and careful, and a little sad, and nothing worse. But she had watched the news and read the pamphlets, and she knew what he had been doing for eleven months, and she was afraid.
The worst part was that he didn't know she was wrong.
He told her he was going to sleep in the truck. She said he didn't have to, she would take the couch, she would take Owen's floor, anything. He said the truck. He took a blanket from the hall closet and went out through the garage. The truck had sat eleven months in the driveway with Claire starting it once a week as he had asked. It started on the first turn. He didn't drive anywhere. He shut it off again, put the seat back as far as it would go, cracked both windows, lay down with the blanket over him and his boots still on, and listened to the crickets until the sky went from black to charcoal to the faint, dirty gray of five o'clock.