“If what?” he said, his voice faltering. He was dying inside.

“I’m ashamed,” she said. “Do you really need me to tell you that? I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

He said nothing.

“You should have stopped it,” she said. “You should have done something.”

“This is my fault?”

“You’re my husband, Henry, and you should have been there to protect me. But you let it happen—you son of a bitch—you just let it happen.” She put her face in her hands, and sobbed.

He left her there, and made his way downstairs. In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of water and drank it down. He paced the den. He imagined grabbing his suitcase, right then, without another word to Effie, and going to the train station. He could take the train to New York and find Alma, somehow. But his thoughts were wild. He wasn’t thinking of Alma, he was thinking of Effie’s bewilderment, her desolation and ruin.

He needed to bathe. Last night lay like a film all over him. In the second-floor bathroom he ran the shower hot and scrubbed himself twice over with the washcloth and soap. Then he stood, letting the water beat down on him, and wept.

He had never felt his heart break like this. The pain seared his insides. He remembered Ida June and how miserable she’d made him. But it was nothing like this.

He’d never be able to look at Effie the same way again, he thought.

He remembered how she’d been there, after Ida June, to offer him solace. It was she who had asked him to the homecoming dance, not the other way around, as she always told it. And he’d been grateful for her. He’d liked how assertive she was. How clear the world was to her. She is white trash and that is all, she’d said, and it had flattered him—more than that, it had touched him deeply—that she liked him, because her judgments could be so severe. He’d always thought she was pretty. A little more short and plump than he liked. (Sturdy, his mother had said, a word he could never quite erase from his mind.) But when she’d brought his attention to her, he’d wanted her. And as they’d grown closer, and he’d begun to imagine her as his wife, part of what had comforted him was knowing that she’d never be capable of making him miserable, the way Ida June had, because she’d never have that kind of hold on him. If he lost her, he’d thought, he’d be sad, but he’d get over it.

And now here he was, and the pain seemed unendurable. He would not get over it—he didn’t see how he could.

He loved her. He hadn’t realized, until now, how much he loved her.