The first time Tony slapped her hard enough to make her lose balance, Cassie did not scream. She reached for the edge of the dining table instead, fingers sliding across polished wood, and held on as the room tilted. A spoon spun off a plate and clattered onto the tile. The stew she had spent an hour making still steamed on the table, filling the room with the smell of tomatoes, onions, and pepper, but somehow the house smelled colder than food should allow.
Tony stood over her, chest rising fast, jaw tight with the kind of anger that looked practiced now. “You call this dinner?” he snapped, shoving the plate away from him. “Is this how a wife takes care of her husband?”
Cassie pressed her lips together. The left side of her face throbbed in slow pulses, heat moving outward under her skin. For a second she stared at the broken line of stew dripping down the table leg onto the white tile, and her mind, absurdly, snagged on how long it would take to scrub out the stain.
Then he said Meera’s name.
That was always when the real pain began.
“Now I understand what Meera meant,” he muttered, almost to himself, pacing once across the room. “She said you don’t know how to take care of a man. I should have listened.s”
Cassie looked up too quickly. “Why do you keep bringing her into everything?”
Her voice came out smaller than she intended, but the question hung there anyway, sharp and naked in the humid evening air.
Tony turned toward her slowly, like a man being insulted. “Because at least she has sense,” he said. “At least she knows how to speak to people. At least she knows respect.s”
Cassie stared at him. Outside, a motorcycle passed on the street, its engine loud and brief. Somewhere down the block children were laughing, a television played from another house, and somebody was frying plantains. It was almost worse that the world outside continued so normally while her own life narrowed into this one ugly room.
