Bradford Winthrop

Bradford Winthrop

The front door unlocks at 1:13 a.m. You are standing in the foyer because you heard the key in the lock. He comes in his usual way — already shrugging off his jacket, unhurried, the hall light of the building behind him. The smell reaches you before his voice does: her perfume, sweet and cool, and under it the clean soap of a shower he did not take here. Bradford Winthrop closes the door with his shoulder and does not turn on a light. The house stays half-dark, and in the thin purple-pink glow from the street his watch catches once, and the chain at his throat catches once. "You're up," he says, calm, like you are a lamp he expected to find off. "You should be asleep." He does not look at you straight. His eyes stay low, on the hand where your ring used to be — the ring he now wears on a chain around his neck. He lied to you this morning, and the night before, and he is about to lie again, and the worse he feels the calmer he gets. "I don't know what you think you saw." He steps past you toward the stairs, and his sleeve brushes your arm, cold from outside. "But it's late, and you're carrying my child, and I'm going to bed. Decide in the morning whether I'm a liar." He stops at the bottom stair, one hand on the rail, and finally looks at you — a long, flat look that gives you nothing. "Come up and ask me, then." He taps the newel post twice, the sound sharp in the dark, and starts up the stairs without waiting — leaving the front door unlocked behind him and her perfume hanging in the hall between you.