I put the bag up on the counter.

Open it, open it, open it.

We open it. My bladder is going to explode.

“You gonna say anything?” he asks.

“What do, do you . . . want to hear from us?”

“Us?”

Us? Did I say us? No. I didn’t. “I said me.”

“You said us.”

“It was a, a mistake. Tell me. What do you want to hear?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said you were expecting me,” I say, focusing really hard on the words.

“Not really expecting. Hoping, I guess, is the word.”

“Hoping? Why?”

“I don’t know why, not really.”

“Tell me.”

He spends a few seconds exhaling, grimacing at the same time. He can’t keep his hands still. “I can hardly sleep,” he says, “and when I do, there are always dreams. I didn’t see anybody die, but I know they did. I saw them after, you know, after they were shot. I saw your wife, I mean, I didn’t see her die, and I was still unconscious when they took me away, but I see her dying anyway. The reason I didn’t see it for real was I messed up and let them get me without a fight. I mean, they could have killed me instead, right? I’d rather have died trying than . . . than this. I dream about them, you know. About the men who did this. I dream about the ones who died. Your wife comes to me at night, in my dreams.”

“What does she say?” I ask, genuinely curious. She hasn’t come to see me yet.

“She tells me there was nothing I could have done.”

“You believe her?”

“No.”

“You’re pathetic,” I say, but the words aren’t mine. “Fucking pathetic.”

“I know,” he says, and tries to fight back tears.

“Stop crying.”

“I’m not crying,” he says, choking on the words.

“Jesus,” I say, slowly shaking my head, but I’m sober now, no longer in danger of throwing up. “You could have stopped them,” I say, my words forceful now, clear.

“You think I didn’t want to? Ah shit, it’s not fair, I mean, six of them, all with guns, and what the hell do I have?” he says, wiping at his eyes before the tears can fall. “Certainly no weapon of any sort. The bank gives me a uniform and that’s it. I mean, that’s not exactly a deterrent against professional bank robbers. Shit, I can’t even keep the damn skateboarders off the front sidewalk. I wanted to do more, I wish I could have done more, but . . . ah shit . . . ,” he says. “Are you . . . are you here to kill me?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I . . . I think so.” His hands are clenched and shaking. Tears are running down his face. “I . . . I don’t have the courage to do it myself.”

All those memories earlier today that weren’t memories, but more like reels of film of different scenarios that rolled through my head, they play out again, and in each one there is nothing this man could have done. One unarmed man against six men with shotguns. Each time he tried to protect us, one or more of the guns would put him in his place, his chest and head exploding into a ball of blood. “You could have saved my wife,” I hear myself saying, even though I know it isn’t true.

I reach into the bag and pull out a serrated steak knife. He doesn’t seem as thrilled about dying as he did five seconds ago, but he doesn’t move or try to fight me.

He cries harder. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “It should’ve been me, it should’ve been me who died.”

“You’re right. It should have been.”

“I . . . I wanted to do it myself,” he says, when we stand up and move closer to him. “But I couldn’t. I was too scared. I heard who you are and I wondered if you might come, if you were anything like your dad.”

“Edward the Hunter,” I say. I thought my hand would be shaking, but it isn’t, it’s firm and we hold the knife firmly and our nerves are steady. “I can’t fight my destiny,” I say.

“Please, just make it quick.”

“We will.”

“Thank you,” he says, but I’m not so sure he means it.

chapter nineteen

I head for outside, my hands shaking, the bag in one hand, the knife tucked away inside it. In the end I didn’t use any of the other supplies. Next time I’ll travel lighter.

I’m still in the doorway when a car pulls into the driveway. It’s similar to the one already parked there—same color, a bit smaller, equally as foreign. The passenger door opens and a little girl climbs out, and at first I can’t make sense of it. The headlights have blinded me, it’s dark out, so in that moment I think the little girl is Sam. No real reason for that—I’m at a stranger’s house, Sam is at her grandparents’, Sam will be in bed with Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, curled up and asleep and dreaming of her mother. But the thought comes anyway, this little girl runs up to me and yells, “Daddy,” before she comes to a dead stop, staring up at me and then staring at the cartoon character bag in my hand.

The headlights turn off and the engine dies and the driver’s door opens. A woman steps out—Painter’s wife—and has noticed I’m standing here, but hasn’t taken a good enough look to realize I’m not her husband.

“I thought maybe once we get her to bed, we might want to take a . . .,” she says, approaching me, and then, like her daughter, she comes to a complete stop.

“Who are you?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.

“I was just leaving,” I say.

“Oh my God,” she says, and the recognition is there now. “Oh my God, is that blood on your shirt? What have you done to Gerald?”

I don’t answer her.

She picks her daughter up and cradles her. I take a few steps toward the driveway and she backs toward the car.

“Gerald!” she yells.

He doesn’t answer.

“What have you done with my husband?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“What did you do to him?” she repeats. Her body pushes against the car and she jumps as if she forgot it was there.

I circle around her and she turns, watching me the entire time. The night is cooling off and clouding over. “Nothing,” I repeat.

“It’s okay, honey,” Gerald says, coming to the door. “He didn’t do anything to me.”

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. About as okay as I’ll ever be.”

“Are you crying?” she asks him, then she turns to me. “The blood on your clothes . . .,” she says, and trails off.

“It’s my wife’s blood,” I say and slowly begin negotiating a path toward my car.

“I know who you are,” she says. “It wasn’t his fault!”

“Honey, it’s okay,” Gerald says. “It’s really okay.”

“I know it wasn’t,” I say, and these words are mine now, clear and sober, they come from me, and when I get past the wife she puts her daughter on the ground, and the little girl runs over to her daddy and hugs him fiercely.

“Who’s that strange man?” she asks.

“It’s why I came here. To tell him I know it wasn’t his fault,” I say. I turn toward Gerald who’s holding his daughter tightly. “It wasn’t. I know that now.”

I turn back to the wife. Some of her anger drains away, but she says nothing. Gerald keeps crying. Sobbing heavily now, tearful, deep sobs that make me angry, remorseful, and a whole lot of wanting to leave. I tighten my grip on the bag and continue toward the street. I hold it tightly to make sure it isn’t going to spill open like before.

The woman stays against the car but keeps watching me. “It wasn’t his fault,” she says.

“I know.”

“You know that now,” she says, “after being here,” she says, her eyes going to the bag for a quick second. “But what about before you got here? Did you know that then?”

I don’t answer.

“We’re moving,” she says. “The house goes on the market next week, but I don’t think we can wait until it sells. My sister was murdered last year, she came home from the picture theater one night and this madman broke into her house and killed her. My sister spent her life in a goddamn wheelchair, and this city’s version of karma gets her raped and killed. A colleague from work disappeared a few months ago and got found a month later, cut up into a dozen pieces by a lawn mower. We have to leave. What happened to Gerald, I thank God it wasn’t worse. It was for you, I know that, but my husband, he’s ruined now. I still love him and will always be with him, but what those men did, he’s a victim too. They killed him and left him alive. My husband is a broken man.”