“No.”
“Your wife was an intelligent woman with resources of her own. If she left, then she left completely. Left this life with you and started again somewhere else. Unseen. Here’s my thing. You’re not well. You weren’t well when I first came here, and you’re not well now. If you weren’t well before she left. Then maybe she left for a good reason. And if you’re not well, you shouldn’t be out here on your own. So I came out here to tell you it’s over, and to ask you to come back where it’s safe.”
He says nothing.
After a moment, the detective nods and says, “Think about it. You won’t be seeing me again. Good luck.”
She leaves, picking her way across the field. He watches the tip of her plastic boot hunt for grass to touch on, navigating around the pools of wet bare mud. A careful escape from a place she doesn’t belong to.
He stands there until he hears her car start. The car he didn’t see arrive. He didn’t ask her if the drones were hers. He feels like he didn’t have to.
Alone, he thinks. He hasn’t been alone since the day they moved here, he thinks.
The wind picks up, as if in answer. The mouth of the fogou rings.
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