The Daylight Marriage by Heidi Pitlor

explained that he would return the next afternoon. “As soon as my plane lands, as soon as I can, I’ll get in my car and drive directly to the station. Can you tell me what’s going on there?”
    â€œTo be honest, I’d rather talk to you in person.” The man sneezed into the phone, and Lovell jolted.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Lovell said before he hung up. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you know where I was.”
    â€œIt was a strange decision,” Duncan said. “At any rate, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    The traffic on the drive to the airport in San Francisco, the wait at the gate, the delay before the plane took off, the flight itself, the wait to get off the plane while the other passengers reached for their overhead baggage and zipped up their jackets and cleaned off their seats and wriggled their way down the narrow aisle—everything moved with infuriating sluggishness in front of him.
    On the drive out of Boston, he thought of one of their earliest arguments, the morning after a party at her parents’ house on the Vineyard. He had sneaked into her bedroom before the sun rose. He watched her as she slept tucked into herself, her rosy mouth open as she breathed. The bed was positioned alongside a bay window that looked out over the Atlantic, glittering with the waning moonlight. After she woke, she sat up in bed and gave him a kiss on his arm. She began to discuss her family’s behavior the previous night: her mother’s tendency to subtly compete with her sister; her name-dropping cousin who worked in a Manhattan law firm; her sister’s resentment of their father, who showed no interest in Leah’s academic successes. Lovell tried to hide a yawn and began to gently wrestle Hannah back to bed, but she resisted. “Did you notice any of that?” she asked. “Not really,” he admitted. “Doesn’t it interest you at all?” she said.
    Lovell, his hand around her naked thigh, finally said, “I don’t know. I guess all families are weird. Oh, and you should have prepared me for your father’s boat, which, by the way, is really a yacht. You could fund a nation with that thing.”
    She pulled away. “You can’t stand this, just sitting here and talking. You are happier screwing or just sitting across from me, silent, than actually engaging in any conversation.” She may have had a point; he loved little more than lounging on his couch with her, both of them lost in a book or a movie. “Sue me for just loving to be with you,” he finally said. And what could she say to that?
    A thought landed on him like a tentative moth: maybe they should never have gotten married.
    But then another thought: Tunisia. It stood behind them like a lighthouse in a forest. Nothing like what a honeymoon should be. No starry-eyed murmurings while lying in bed together. No marathon sessions of lovemaking, just a moment of rescue, or near heroism, and the grateful look on her face, the belief that they had absolutely done the right thing in coming together.
    The parking lot at the police station was almost full, and Lovell sped past the other cars, drumming the heel of his palm against the steering wheel. He finally found a spot on the street adjacent to the station and hurried inside.
    Bob Duncan’s office door was closed, so Lovell knocked. As he waited, he began to wonder why he had been so anxious to get here. What news—what good news—could there be at this point?
    Duncan pulled open the door and led him into the office. “I’ll get right to it. The guys found fingernail marks on a pier at Carson.”
    â€œFingernail marks? Do you know they’re even hers?” This was Hannah they were talking about. Tu. This was his wife.
    â€œI want you to think back hard now and make sure there’s nothing you might have forgotten to tell me. No store she once went to near Carson, no old friend