I locked my wife in the pantry under the stairs

wait.

She looks at me now.

“Love can be real and still not be safe.”

The sentence enters me quietly and destroys more than anger could.

“I know,” I say.

“No. You’re learning.”

She is right.

The investigation turns the town inside out.

They search the cellar and find thirty years of survival: canned food, old blankets, a pipe rigged to bring water, stacks of continue reading …