‘Whatever.’ Carol shrugged and kept filing her nails. The drier tumbled in another part of the basement, and he heard a zipper banging on the metal drum.

His wife wore a long-sleeved Minnesota Vikings T-shirt and gray sweatpants. She always wore loose clothes to cover the extra ten pounds she complained about. Her mousy brown hair was pushed back behind her ears. She grabbed a tissue to blow her nose, which was a little too large for the rest of her face. Her eyes were brown, and her winter-pale skin sported a few freckles.

‘I booked the Dells for our vacation in July,’ she told him.

Howard picked up his high school bowling trophy from the desk and rubbed a little dust from the base with the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Do we have to go there again? We’ve been there three years in a row.’

‘I love it there. So does Annie.’

‘Well, we’ve done it already,’ Howard complained. ‘We should go someplace else.’

‘Well, what about Branson?’

Howard frowned and didn’t answer. They’d been to Branson three times, too. Everything about their lives was as predictable as an assembly line. Same vacations. Same television shows. Same meals. It was Wednesday, and Wednesday was meatloaf day. Every week, all year. For Carol, routine was like a suit of armor against change. Change was bad. Change was scary. She wanted her world to stay exactly the same.

He understood why she felt that way. At twelve years old, Carol had walked into the garage and found her father hanging by his belt from an overhead beam. Her perfect suburban childhood had been stolen away. She was never going to let that happen again.

Howard put down his trophy with a frustrated little bang. Janine Snow stared at him from his computer monitor. Dr. Perfect.

‘Fine, we can go to the Dells if that’s what you want,’ he said with a sigh. Surrender was the easiest way to keep peace.

‘Good. It’ll be fun. We can go to that supper club you like. The one by the lake.’

‘Uh huh.’

Carol got up from the sofa. She looked pleased with herself. ‘You coming to bed?’

‘I want to work on tomorrow’s lesson plan,’ he said.

‘Howard, you teach ninth-grade history. It hasn’t changed since last year. Here’s a hint: the North won the war.

He knew that she didn’t mean to be nasty when she teased him about his job. To her, there was no shame in being an ordinary teacher in an ordinary school. Even so, her jokes bothered him. They reminded him of everything he hadn’t done with his life.

‘I’ll be up later,’ he muttered.

‘Okay, ’night.’ She wiggled her fingers at him.