One Cold Night

when their initial passion had somewhat cooled, the deep friendship that blossomed had saturated him with contentment. She was a full decade younger than him, and a sweetness still clung to her face, a shine to her glorious eyes, but tonight there was something new. She had turned twenty-nine just yesterday, and now her face had the sober look of a woman about to cross thirty, heading forward in life, understanding the inevitability of... what? Something had changed.
    They crossed the street to the sidewalk and turned right toward Water Street Chocolates. The smell of paint grew stronger. Across the street, a new café was being built; in fact, its opening was just days away, and the smell might have emanated from any one of its freshly painted elements.
    “What’s that?” Susan pointed to a splotch of color in front of the factory side of her double storefront.
    The patch of yellow moved through Dave’s mind with the evolution of a Rorschach image gathering a certain shape. It looked like part of a footprint. Nearby, an unfinished, freshly painted yellow line edged the sidewalk’s curb. The line was steady and careful, completely filled in with color until it abruptly stopped in a smear of drips. The paintbrush lay in the middle of the street at the end of a long yellow dribble, as if it had been thrown. The garage door was scrolled down and the shop’s front door was closed but the store lights were on.
    “Come on,” Dave said, heading toward the shop.
    He untucked his T-shirt and used the bottom edge to cover the brass knob as he turned it. Susan looked disturbed by his action but didn’t ask why he was doing it: protecting the last fingerprints to touch the knob. Dave was too aware of how botched evidence could wreck a case to destroy any himself, even though he hated thinking of this as a case or the surfaces of Susan’s shop as possibly bearing evidence of anything other than the blessedly mundane business of making and selling chocolate. He mentally noted that the door was unlocked and the alarm system was off.
    Everything looked as usual: the pretty shop with its built-in polished walnut shelving filling up with Halloween treats; cellophane twinkling under soft, clear lighting; three small round tables by the window; the cash register, quiet, on a raised section of counter.
    “Lisa?” Susan called. “Lisa!”
    They moved through the swung-open doors leading into the gleaming factory. Using his shirt over hishand again, Dave turned on the light in Susan’s small, organized office. So far, other than the store being unlocked and the lights on, there was no sign that Lisa had been here; but someone had.
    “The inside door to the garage is open,” Susan said, heading in that direction. Dave followed her.
    In the far corner of the garage, past the cream-painted delivery truck, the plastic storage closet hung open. Susan stood in front of it, studying its neatly organized contents.
    “Nothing else is missing, just the paint and the brush,” she said. “But she was here, Dave.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Maybe?”
    They had no proof, Dave thought, and assumptions were dangerous.
    “We don’t know if it was Lisa who painted the line,” he said. “The footprint out there is bigger than her shoe. Someone else might have come here, one of your workers.”
    “In the middle of the night? After Lisa and I argued? Who would come here to paint this line in the middle of the night when I didn’t ask anyone to?”
    Dave ground his jaw. “I’m sorry I forgot again.”
    “No, Dave. I’m not angry at you about not getting around to painting the line. I know how busy you are. I’m upset that she came out here in the dark and did it herself, that’s what I’m upset about, and now she... she...” Susan raised both her hands to her face.
    Why was she weeping? What had Susan and Lisa argued about to predicate this much drama? He put his arms around his wife and tried to calm her down. “Sweetie, we don’t know who did this,” he tried. But how could he convince Susan that Lisa might not havebeen here tonight, or that anyone else in the world might have thought to paint the yellow line, right here, right now, in the emotional space between Dave’s failure to do it himself and Lisa’s determination to have the last word in some mysterious argument?
    “Dave,” Susan sobbed, “you know Lisa, you know how she makes impulsive decisions. I don’t understand how you can look at this and not see that it was