Unforced Entry

Valentina hasn't spoken in four meetings.

She comes every Tuesday. She takes the chair by the door. She listens to the others talk about what they've lost and she nods in the right places and she leaves before anyone can ask her anything. Her husband Hugo died five weeks ago in a fire at a rental house off I-10. She has a folder of pamphlets from the hospital. She has not opened them.

Tonight there's someone new in the circle. A man named Salvador. Mid-forties. Work jacket. Hands on his knees.

He says his wife died in a gas leak at a rental house off I-10, out past Sealy. Five weeks ago.

He says her name was Valentina.

"A work of psychological suspense about two people in a church basement who can't say the real thing out loud — because the words would open a door neither of them can afford to open."