The Hidden by Bill Pronzini

She’d felt it, too, but she had the capacity to keep it in perspective.
    She said, “Will you please just forget about it? We’ll probably never see any of them again.”
    “What if they invite us to spend New Year’s Eve with them?”
    “They won’t.”
    “Damn well say no if they do.”
    Back at the cottage now, turning in under the carport. The power was still out—naturally. Inside, the damp and the chill had taken over again; in the darkness, the dank, musty smell had a subterranean quality, like the inside of a sea cave. Quickly, guided by the flashlight, Shelby rounded up half a dozen candles from the supply closet and lit the wicks. Jay took the matches and got the fire going while she distributed the candles to each of the rooms.
    Most of the ice in the martini pitcher was unmelted; that was how cold it was in there. She hesitated, looking into the pitcher. Enough for another glass. Usually two was her limit, but tonight, after that godawful four-hour drive and the bizarre twenty minutes or so at the Lomax place, she decided she was entitled to a little overindulgence.
    The old Dorothy Parker quatrain popped into her head as she was pouring her glass full.
    I like to have a martini,
    Two at the very most.
    After three I’m under the table,
    After four I’m under my host.
    Uh-uh, she thought, not tonight. Not under the table, and definitely not under Jay. Three martinis spaced out over an hour and a half weren’t going to get her hammered or make her amorous. Still, she’d better eat something after she finished this one. It had been more than seven hours since the light, late lunch they’d had before leaving home.
    Jay had the fire blazing now, the flames painting the darkness with a flickering red-orange glow. He said as he came over to her, “Better go easy. That’s three on an empty stomach.”
    “I know how many I’ve had.”
    “I didn’t mean it that way. Just making a comment.”
    The comment being that she was drinking too much lately. Well, he was right, she was. And until he’d suddenly slacked off before Christmas, so was he. Another indication that the marriage was in trouble—their mutual reliance on alcohol to get them through their evenings alone together. Maybe that was why he’d mostly quit after all: subtle pressure to get her to do the same. His noncommunicative way of trying to shore up the crumbling foundation of their relationship.
    Sorry, sweetie, she thought, it’s not working.
    He said, “Let’s get warm and then I’ll make us something to eat.”
    “The good-cold casserole we brought with us?”
    “Well, I had to tell them something to get us out of there,” he said defensively. “No way we were going to eat with those people.”
    She’d meant the casserole comment as a mild joke, and he’d taken it as a rebuke for lying. As she’d taken his reminder about three martinis on an empty stomach as implied criticism. Each of them guilty of misreading the other, something that hadn’t happened in the days when the foundation had been solid, that happened all too often now.
    Was there any real chance of saving the marriage, bringing back the closeness they’d once shared? He might want to save it, but did she? Sometimes she thought yes, sometimes no, and sometimes she wondered if saving it was worth the effort. She still cared for him, but how much of that caring was love and a genuine need to be with him, and how much simple compassion, habit, inertia? She didn’t know, couldn’t make up her mind. One thing she did know: the degrees of separation between them were widening into an unbridgeable chasm. If the marriage did have a chance to survive, something major had to change—direction, communication, something. And soon, very soon.
    No question a split would be difficult. She’d miss Jay; you couldn’t love and live with a man for twelve years and not be left with an unfilled hole. But she’d get along all right. With or without Dr. Douglas Booth or any