He left the trash bin open and moved through the rest of the house with a different kind of urgency now. By the back door, a man’s jacket hung from a hook that used to hold nothing but Laura’s raincoat — too small to be his, but too big to belong to anyone as slight as his wife.
In the bedroom, a second pillow sat on what should have been his side of the bed, carrying a scent that wasn’t Laura’s perfume or his own laundry detergent. On the kitchen calendar, a name was scrawled across Tuesday in handwriting that wasn’t hers: “M — collect test results, 2 pm.” He stared at it, trying to place a face to the name and coming up with nothing solid enough to hold onto.
He was still staring at the calendar when a sharp knock rattled the front door, hard enough that he felt it through the floor. Then a voice, loud and official, cut through the quiet house. “Police! Open the door!” Daniel’s stomach dropped for an entirely new reason.