His hands were shaking. "Stay there," I said. He stayed there. From the other room, Rick's voice came through flat and even. Get your stuff.
Then a door, then quiet. Dana turned to Holly. I don't know what she said. I wasn't listening anymore. I was looking at Brent sitting on the floor with his hands over his face, blood running between his fingers, and I was waiting to feel something about it.
Satisfied maybe, or sick, or both. What I felt was a kind of hollow stillness, like the sound after a phone call you've been dreading ends. Holly was crying. I know that because I could hear it behind me. I didn't turn around.
I picked the lamp up off the floor and set it on the nightstand. That was a strange thing to do. I don't know why I did it. Force of habit maybe. Fix what's broken, put things back where they go.
Old reflex. The curtain near the window moved in a draft from the front door Rick had left open. Brent looked up at me from the floor. His eye was swelling. He didn't say anything.
I didn't say anything either. In the other room someone was crying harder now. Amber, I thought, or maybe still Holly. Hard to tell. Dana's voice cut through at once, short and sharp.
And then the crying got quieter. The cabin was a mess. A lamp on its cord, a nightstand shoved sideways, glass from something I hadn't tracked breaking, someone's shoes in the middle of the floor. I stood there in the middle of all of it and thought, "Okay, now it's over." She'd pulled on clothes. I'd turned away while she did it, not out of consideration, just because I didn't want to look at her.
And when I turned back, she was standing near the foot of the bed with her arms crossed over her chest, which was a posture I recognized. It was the one she used when she was about to reframe something. "Nathan." Her voice was careful, measured. "I need you to let me explain. I didn't say anything.
I know what you think you saw, she started. I have video, I said, cutting her off. That stopped her. Just for a second, but it stopped her. Her eyes moved to my phone and then back to my face.