Excerpt of Included!

JOHN HARTHe turned the key. I stood in the dust and watched him go, then sat on thehood of my car and waited for Grace. She was smooth and sure, bending arrowswith quiet resolve. After a few minutes I pulled the car into the driveway,went inside, and came back out with a beer. I dragged a rocking chair to theother side of the porch, where I could watch her.The sun sank.Grace never lost her rhythm.When she finally came up onto the porch, I thought that she would walkpast without speaking, but she stopped at the door. Her bruises were black inthe gloom. “I’m glad to see you,” she said.I didn’t get up. “Thought I’d make dinner.”She opened the door. “What I said before. I didn’t mean it.”She was talking about Dolf.“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.I found ground beef in the refrigerator and had dinner on the table by thetime she came out. She smelled like clean water and flowered soap. Wet hairbrushed the robe she wore and the sight of her face shot new barbs through mychest. The eyes were better, but the torn lips still looked raw, the stitches blackand stiff and wrong. The bruises had eggplant hearts fading to green at theedges. “How bad is it?” I asked.“This?” She pointed at her face. “This is meaningless.” She looked at thewater I’d poured for her, then pulled a beer out of the fridge. She cracked it,took a sip, and sat. She pushed up her sleeves to eat, and I saw the wreckage ofher left forearm. The bowstring had chewed it up, put long welts across a teninchstretch. Grace caught me staring.“Jesus, Grace. You’re supposed to wear arm guards.”She took a bite, unflinching, and pointed at my plate. “You going to eat that?”We ate dinner, drank beer, and barely spoke. We tried, but failed, and the silencegrew close to comfortable. The company mattered. It was enough.When I said good night, her eyes were heavy. I lay on the guest bed, thinking ofJamie’s deceit and of tomorrow’s conversation, of all the things that lived withsuch force in this place. The sheer volume made the room spin. Life, in all its252