Full Release by marshall thornton Page B

carefully, checking for anything out of place. My laptop sat on the coffee table in front of my sofa where I’d left it. Pillows and a blanket were still spread out on the sofa. Did they look different? I couldn’t be sure. One of the cushions on the sofa seemed loose, like it had been pulled off and put back on. Was it like that when I left?
    I had some books in a bookshelf. I couldn’t remember the order I’d had them in, but suddenly the order they were in didn’t seem right. Okay, stop, I told myself. The laptop was here right in front of me on the coffee table. If someone had been in my house trying to rob me, it would be long gone. I tried to relax my shoulders, which were up around my ears. I went into the bedroom to put on something more comfortable. Shorts maybe. It was still warm even though--
    The drawers on my dresser were open slightly. I was sure I’d shut them all the way that morning when I pulled out my underwear. The bed seemed to be pulled away from the wall in a way it hadn’t been before. I went over to the closet and opened it. My clothes hung mutely, as though refusing to tell me what I wanted to know.
    Had someone been in here? Someone who hadn’t taken anything? Ridiculous. I told myself I was being ridiculous. The front door had been locked when I came through it. The back door and the sliding door from the living room to the patio were also locked. No one had broken in. No one had been in my home.
    I went out to the garage and stared for a few minutes at the boxes that contained my kitchen things. It seemed like more of the boxes were open than before, their contents messy and disorganized. Had I packed them that way? I didn’t think so.
    If someone had been in there, I told myself, it was Jeremy. After he moved out, I’d changed the locks to spite him. But there was the key underneath a potted plant on the back patio. I didn’t think he’d remember a detail like that, but maybe I was wrong.
    Stop it. No one had been in my house. I’d just spent too much time in the last twenty-four hours with suspicious cops. Their paranoia had worn off on me, that’s all that was going on.
    Still, it felt like I wouldn’t be able to relax in my own home for a long, long time.

Chapter Nine
    I’m a crisis drinker. When there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on in my life, I hardly drink at all. But when shit hits the fan, I tend to hit the bottle. I drank quite a bit when Jeremy left. A few months later, I was back to my normal, reasonably sober routine. Eddie’s suicide, though. That was a crisis. By four-thirty that afternoon, I’d poured myself a glass of wine and was sitting in my backyard.
    The backyard is probably my favorite thing about my house. A wall surrounds it, and Jeremy and I had filled it with all sorts of plants. Night-blooming jasmine, a couple of small Japanese maples, a ridiculously large jade plant in one corner, and pots of whatever happened to be blooming at the garden store. The whole effect was colorful and appealingly overgrown.
    The sun had begun to set, and I was having a moment of actual calm when my cell rang. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was Peter. Finally.
    “Okay, what something bad happened? Or did you just leave a cryptic message to get me to call you back?” There was sleep in his voice, and I could tell he was annoyed at me.
    “Eddie hung himself in my garage.”
    Peter was silent for a moment. “All right, that is bad. Are you okay?”
    “I’ll be fine. Can you come over after work? I could use the company.”
    “That’s a little inconvenient--”
    “I know it’s a long drive, but Peter, a guy killed--”
    “I’m kind of in New York.”
    “You’re kind of in New York?”
    “I am in New York. At the Waldorf, if you can believe that.”
    I was confused. “Last time we talked you were having anonymous sex with a guy you met in a parking garage.”
    “I did. Then he said, ‘let’s go to New York on my private jet.’ I mean, who says no