Alice looked through the rest of the box. There was a cheap stuffed monkey that looked like it had been won in a fair, a second-place ribbon beginning to fray, a Bible with a white cover and Edith’s name inside of it, and two letters, typewritten on thin, oniony paper, that Alice was shocked to discover were from Gary Shurtleff, Alice’s biological father. Both were postmarked from San Diego, California. Both were short and apologetic, although in the second one he called Edith an uppity bitch for not writing him back. Neither of the letters mentioned a baby, even though Alice assumed he’d written them after he’d gotten her mother pregnant. Edith had once told Alice that her father had scampered out west as soon as he found out he was going to be a father. Now Alice wondered if her father had ever known about her. She also wondered where he was now. In California still? Then she put the letters back in the box with the yearbook and the Bible and the few other sentimental items that Edith had kept, and brought the whole box down to the Dumpster and got rid of it.

The first winter after high school—the first winter that Alice was alone with Jake—was long and particularly cold. From January through most of March, the coast was pounded with an almost weekly storm, the temperatures rarely above freezing. Alice didn’t mind. When she wasn’t at college, where she’d enrolled in the business administration program with an accounting concentration, she was happy to be at home, warm in the condominium, with its views of the grey ocean, mirrored by its grey sky. The weather made her lazy and hungry. Every day she’d eat macaroni and cheese for lunch, then drowse on the couch, a textbook open across her lap, soap operas playing on the television in the background. She didn’t really pay much attention to them, except for General Hospital, but she liked the background noise. Jake always called before he left the bank, and it would give her time to take a shower, put something nice on, apply a little makeup. On the first real warm day of spring—sometime in mid-May—she met Jake at the door wearing her favorite pair of shorts and a bikini top.

“Summer’s here,” she said.

He squeezed her skin just above the waistline of the shorts, and said, “I’m surprised you can still fit into those things.”

That night, after Jake had fallen asleep, Alice slid from the bed naked and went to the bathroom and weighed herself. She had gained weight, ten pounds at least. Of course, since high school had ended, she no longer ran. She never really exercised at all, so it was no wonder she was getting fat.