Gingerly she lifted her leg and rested her foot on the seat of another kitchen chair. Her instep was bruised and swollen, but she could rotate her ankle. She rested the ice pack on the sorest spot. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes.

She shouldn’t have torn into Frank like that. Because hating his crap was like hating his nose or his smile. And his frenzied collecting came as no surprise, not after eight years of marriage. But his crack about their fertility issues—her fertility issues, was how he framed it—had been mean and thoughtless. When they’d gotten the latest test results a few weeks ago, Frank had seemed relieved, maybe because there really was something wrong and it turned out not to be his fault. Emily was producing antibodies that were killing Frank’s sperm. She’d been trying to get Frank to talk about what to do next, but he kept brushing her off. Too tired. Too busy. But not too busy to go to yard sales.

Maybe he’d been relieved, too, because, when it came to having a family, he wasn’t as all in as he claimed to be. Or maybe it was their marriage that he wasn’t that all into. That brought Emily to a full stop, and she choked up.

A half hour later, Emily was in her bedroom with the makeshift ice pack tied around her foot. As she finished sorting her closet, she ran through the roster of men she’d dated before Frank. There was Brad, the grad student who’d been late picking her up at the airport when she flew out to visit him at Berkeley. He’d been on a volleyball team and their end-of-season game had gone into overtime. Three hours of overtime. Richard, the lawyer who was sweet to her but insufferably rude to waitstaff and salespeople. Ed, an engineer who thought climate change was a sham and Ronald Reagan had been the Second Coming. Jim, who. . . . maybe it wasn’t fair to count him. Their relationship had consisted almost entirely of steamy text messages and a photograph she wished she’d never seen.

Next to any of them, Frank was a prince. Yes, he had his shortcomings. But he remembered that she needed a salad spinner.

Her eyes misted over after she pulled her wedding dress—a short white sleeveless silk dress with a V-neck and a bunch of delicate (now crushed) pink silk flowers sewn onto the bodice—from the much-diminished clothing pile. She glanced across to her bureau, at a wedding picture of her wearing that dress with Frank beside her, strong and handsome and staring into her eyes with goofy affection. She could smell his aftershave.