The key turned in the lock the way it always had, a soft scrape and then the familiar give of the latch, and Marcus stepped into the apartment with his olive-drab duffel hanging from one shoulder and a smile already forming on his face. Soft daytime light came through the living-room window and laid itself across the beige carpet, the brown sofa, the white walls that still smelled faintly of the candle Jasmine liked to burn when she was lonely. By the door sat the empty dog bed. Beside it, two pet bowls. On the wall, in a simple black frame, a photograph of a younger Marcus in civilian clothes, arms wrapped around a German Shepherd whose ears were cocked and whose eyes were bright with the kind of loyalty that did not know how to quit.
"Babe, I'm home," Marcus called, smiling, voice warm with the particular relief of a man who had crossed an ocean and a desert and a stretch of months that felt longer than either. "Shadow? Here boy! Hey… where's Shadow? He always comes to the door."
Silence answered him. Not the silence of a dog sleeping in another room, not the silence of a dog out on a walk. The silence of absence, thick as dust.
Jasmine stood near the sofa in a pink tank top and gray sweatpants, shoulder-length curly black hair pulled half back, dark-brown eyes already wet. She was twenty-seven, soft and curvy, medium-deep brown skin that used to glow when he walked in. Now she looked as if someone had drained the light out of her from the inside.
"Marcus," she said, defensive before he had even set the duffel down, "I had to. He was too much work. I took him to the shelter."
The smile left his face the way a light leaves a room when someone flips the switch. He set the duffel down carefully, as if sudden movement might break something that was already breaking. His athletic frame, still in the U.S. Army OCP uniform, dog tags resting against his chest, tan boots planted on the beige carpet, seemed to grow heavier. Deep brown skin, military buzz cut, strong jaw under light stubble, dark-brown eyes that had seen things he did not talk about at dinner — all of it turned toward her with a devastation that rose into anger like heat rising off asphalt.
"You did what? Shadow's been with me since I was sixteen — thirteen years."