Until She Comes Home by Lori Roy

gone to bed, or better yet, not until he has left for work tomorrow.
    “You must be famished,” Malina says. “The table is set. I’ll have supper on in no time.”
    “What’s going on out there?” Mr. Herze says, kissing the cheek Malina offers him and then leaning through the open door.
    Across the street, the officer and Julia still stand at the end of her driveway. Malina lures Mr. Herze into the house with a nod of her head and closes the door. He pulls a kerchief from his front pocket, pats his upper lip and forehead, and glances about the house as if wondering why it’s so hot. His white shirt has wilted since this morning, and it clings to his soft middle.
    “It’s nothing,” Malina says. “A lot of fuss over nothing.”
    This is how it should always be—Malina waiting at the dining-room table, supper in the oven, the ice bucket full. She should never find herself rushing through the back door, stuffing one of her nicer dresses in the closet, ruining a perfectly good pair of utility nylons because she couldn’t take the time to slip them off with care, and crawling into bed without removing her makeup or pinning the hair at her temples. After leaving Willingham Avenue, her hammer abandoned in the alley, this is what she had done. As it turned out, she needn’t have been in such a hurry. Mr. Herze followed a full thirty minutes later. The hair at the nape of his neck had been slightly damp and he smelled of fresh soap. His shirt, however, smelled of the girl. No matter that he always washed up afterward, only Malina could rid those shirts of the stench. This evening, he appears dry throughout and smells only of cigarettes smoked in a closed office, warmed-over coffee, and the faded remnants of cologne sprayed on first thing this morning. No trace of his girl.
    “What do you mean, nothing?” Mr. Herze says. “Why are there people running about with flashlights? And why are there police on the street?”
    Malina sets Mr. Herze’s briefcase in the front closet and hangs his hat on the hook inside the closet door.
    “I imagine it has to do with Elizabeth Symanski,” Malina says.
    “What of her?”
    Malina smooths Mr. Herze’s thinning hair, rests one cheek on his shirt, the limp cotton moist against her skin, and inhales through her nose. Still no evidence of the girl.
    “Elizabeth?” Mr. Herze says again, nudging Malina to continue. “What’s become of the girl?”
    “Apparently, she’s wandered off,” Malina says, pulling away. Tomorrow, she’ll fish this shirt from the hamper and smell it again.
    “And they are searching for her?” Mr. Herze says, crossing in front of Malina to look out the dining-room window. “Have there been many men searching?”
    “Yes, I suppose there have been.”
    Without another word, Mr. Herze lumbers up the stairs, taking them two at a time. A few minutes later, he returns, wearing brown trousers and the white undershirt he normally wears when fussing about in his garage. His chest pumps and his face glistens.
    “Have you taken to driving at night again?” Mr. Herze’s face, except for the sheen on top of his head, disappears in the dark entry. His white shirt glows.
    Malina inhales, holds the air in her chest, and slowly, so Mr. Herze will not see it or feel it or hear it, she exhales. “Certainly not. Why on earth would I do such a thing?”
    Mr. Herze trails his fingers over Malina’s wrist, past her elbow, and wraps them around her upper arm. He knows she doesn’t care for sleeveless blouses, doesn’t like for others to see the loose skin that hangs there, and so this particular area will never show. His fingers dig into the slender bone.
    “It’s difficult for you still to see after dusk?”
    Malina smiles, controls each breath so it flows smoothly. “The reflections are intolerable.”
    Still holding Malina by her arm, her fingertips tingling from lack of blood, Mr. Herze opens the door. He stands in the threshold, not quite inside, not quite