It’s the fourth of August and we’re smack in the middle of the roaring twenties. The sunset’s lighting up the sky, the perfect mixture of orange and deep red. Jack and I have secured seats at the picture place; all the ladies at work have been on and on about the new Charlie Chaplin film and I’m curious to know just what all the fuss is about.

Giddy, I pull out my Elsa Schiaparelli dress: the single most expensive clothing item in the history of my family. I’m really putting it on for Jack, he loves when I wear it with the embroidered lace gloves and the stupid T-strap heels, makes me look proper he says. Besides, Jack and I don’t go out too often, with his job at the factory taking up every second of the day. At seven sharp, I see him pull up in front of the porch in the green Chevrolet that I hate and he loves. The car door slams and I’m nervous. Will he love me today? The door creaks open and I can hear the weak floor boards groan with his weight. I refuse to breathe, terrified my corset will buck under its strain.

Emma? He calls. In here I can barely respond. I’m a few minutes away from death my brain screams. Well come on out…or we’ll be late. Pleading with the arcs of my feet to get it together, I put one foot before the other and there I am, naked without the privacy of my mahogany door. At that moment, the ancient grandfather clock two doors down the left stops ticking and the whole of Neptune pauses. His eyelids are glossy and I love how they barely kiss the genesis of his cheekbones. His hair is falling the right way today, down to his shoulders but not quite and there’s none of that smelly gel so his roots spring up gloriously. I take in the curve of his broad shoulders, the bump on his nose almost between his eyes and his muscled frame concealed by the starched cotton button-down. The semblance of a sound escapes his lips and I can’t feel the happiness in it.

In an instant, there are two lifetimes between us. In them, I can see our romance dwindling like a fire I forgot to stoke. My unborn Jack junior dissolves within me and our future sixty years as a happily married couple, those that I had dreamed about for weeks on end, seem nothing more than a cruel joke. Clearing my throat, I ask: Do you love me today? He stares at me with those bronze eyes and begins: I love… With that hesitation, it feels as though our love is a house and it is currently burning to ashes.

He places the palm of his right hand tenderly at the small of my back and we are so close I hope he can’t smell yesterday’s apple pie. My anxiety begins to envelope me. I can already hear him telling me softly that he’s sorry, that he thought he loved me but he doesn’t, that he met someone shinier at work, Ana or Louisa or Jane…Then:

I love how you constantly try to impress me with this cruel corset that I hate, even though I have studied every bit of your body between hallelujahs and I know that there are two stretch marks beneath your right breast.

I love how your house-with the laundry neatly concealed underneath your bed- smells of rabbit stew and bergamot, smells of home.

I love how you open your big doe eyes left before right each morning because you want to check that the world is still there.

I love that you ask me if I love you because it gives me an opportunity to remind you that Emma: I was in love with you yesterday, I am in love with you today, I will be in love with you tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

I hate that you are scared of everything he says amidst laughs but selfishly I love it because it means you’ll want to keep me around for longer, to remind you that I am yours and prove to you why you should be mine.

He collapses in the wicker chair next to the window and gazes at me, a smile dancing on his lips.

***

Jack knows that he loves this girl standing before him. He knows it as he takes her in his arms and traces kisses down her neck. He knows it as he guides her to the car, his firm Oxfords tapping the gravel. He knows it as they drive off into the dark, palms meeting each other in-between their seats.

He knows it as he makes a turn and swerves into an unmarked alley, forty-five minutes away from the picture place. He knows it as he shakes his head and says nothing’s wrong nothing’s wrong when she asks them where the hell they are. He knows it as he picks the crowbar hidden beneath his seat and bashes in her skull. He even knows it as he watches her Schiaparelli dress turn a shade of crimson.

What Jack doesn’t know however, is that Emma knew this day was coming. She knew it when she saw the video tapes and rabid plans tucked underneath his pillow. She asked him the same helpless question every day for two years in the vain hope that she could change his mind.