He went through the ground floor methodically, returning everything to its exact position. He had a good memory for how rooms looked. He'd always been able to walk into a space and remember how it had been arranged before. Right now that was useful.
When he was satisfied, he carried his duffel bag to the front entryway and set it down by the door. He looked at it. Jacket on the hook. Boots on the mat. Bag by the door, slightly scuffed from the airline hold, one zipper still open from when he'd grabbed something on the car ride over.
Just arrived this morning. Early car service from downtown. Roads were clearer than they said.
He looked at the entryway for another moment and decided it was right.
Then he went to make breakfast.
He knew how Jade functioned the morning after a night that felt like too much - or more precisely, a night that felt too good to be anything but guilty. She would lie in bed and go through it, piece by piece, quietly and thoroughly, and by the time she finally came downstairs she'd have her careful face on. The composed, neutral expression that was supposed to look normal and instead looked like a person bracing for a verdict. He'd seen it too many times to count, and he had never once figured out how to argue her out of it directly. She was too stubborn for direct.
Better to interrupt before she got all the way there.
He made scrambled eggs and toast, found the strawberry jam at the back of the refrigerator, added coffee and the small pitcher of cream she liked. Loaded the tray and carried it upstairs.
She was still in bed. Lying on her side, facing the window, the blanket pulled up to her shoulder. She turned her head when he pushed the door open with his foot.
He looked at her. She looked at the tray. Then at him. Something moved across her face that wasn't guilt and wasn't the neutral mask - something smaller than both of those, something she didn't quite manage to put away in time.
"You didn't have to-" she started.
"I know." He set the tray on the nightstand. "Eat first."
He'd already been into the bathroom. Her clothes were laid out on the counter - clean underwear, her softest jeans, the dark green turtleneck from the top shelf of the closet. He'd looked at the turtleneck specifically and thought about it for a moment, and then thought: yes, definitely the turtleneck.
"Wear the green sweater," he said, moving toward the door. "The high-neck one."
A pause from the bed. "Blake."
"It's cold," he said. "Just wear it."
He walked out before she could say anything else. He heard her make a sound behind him that was probably exasperation. He was fine with that.
Jade took her coffee into the bathroom and turned on the light.
She turned around to look at herself in the mirror.
She stood there.
The marks ran from the curve of her collarbone upward along her throat, scattered and overlapping - some of them dark enough that they'd still be visible at the end of the week. There were more than she'd registered last night. She was aware, in a vague way, that she should have registered more carefully, and also that she had been somewhat distracted.
Her face went hot. She pressed both palms flat against her cheeks and stood there and waited for the heat to subside and it did not subside.
She was twenty-two years old and she was standing in a bathroom at ten in the morning pressing her hands against her own face because of - because of -
She turned the shower on and stepped under it before she finished the sentence.
She kept her eyes on the tile grout while she washed her hair. She focused on the entirely mundane business of conditioner and body wash and the specific temperature of the water. She did not look at herself again. She was practicing a thing she'd gotten very good at over the last two years and seven months, which was choosing very deliberately not to look at certain things.
When she stepped out and reached for her clothes, she found the pile Blake had left on the counter.
The green sweater on top, folded. Underneath it: her softest bra - the comfortable one from the back of the drawer, the one she only wore on days when everything felt like a bit too much. He'd known which one. Of course he'd known. He'd spent five years in the same house and he knew all of it - which mug she used in the mornings, which shelf the extra blankets were on, which of her sweaters she reached for when she was cold versus when she was cold and upset. He'd absorbed all of it without her ever sitting down to explain herself, the way you absorbed things about people when you lived alongside them long enough.
She held the bra for a moment and felt, very specifically, both grateful and miserable about this.
Her mind went somewhere she hadn't meant to let it go. Tonight Gerald and Margaret would come home. There'd be dinner, conversation, probably Gerald sitting in his chair with whatever he was reading, Margaret moving through the kitchen with that particular efficient warmth. And then the lights would go off and the house would go quiet and then-
She put the bra down, turned on the cold tap, and splashed water on her face until the thought dissolved.
Stop it. She looked at herself in the mirror now - properly, now that the green sweater was on and the marks were entirely covered. She looked normal. She looked like herself. She looked like Jade Thorne on an ordinary Saturday in February, which was exactly what she needed to look like.
She pulled her hair back, tightened the elastic, and went to find her shoes.