What the future holds, what lurks on the dark side of the mind, all that is mysterious and unknown and invisible to the naked eye—my naked eye—will forever cause me to twitch with dread. As Dr. Frond used to say, the need to control that which we can’t is born out of fear. And I have enough fear to last a lifetime.

If I learned one thing, though, during my downfall with Adrienne, it’s this:

That what happens will happen whether I am watching or not.

Maintaining a constant vigilant eye will not keep disaster from striking, or the plane from crashing; it will not keep Donald from straying or from leaving me for someone else. Disaster will strike or not strike; the plane will crash or not crash; Donald will leave me for someone else or stay with me forever. Love, trust, faith—they are not equipped with radar devices, sonar devices, night-vision devices, lifetime guarantees.

They are blind as bats.

But they are all we have.

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With gratitude to Bill Clegg, Robin Desser, Paul Sidey, Andy McKillop, Mark McCallum, Sue Freestone, Marisa Pagano, Wendy Law-Yone, Nancy Pearlstein, Marian Brown, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, and especially Jana Kollias, whose tales of pathology were truly inspirational.

About the Author

LAURA ZIGMAN

Her

Laura Zigman is the author of Animal Husbandry and Dating Big Bird. She spent ten years working in book publishing in New York. Her pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She now lives outside Boston.

Also by Laura Zigman

ALSO BY LAURA ZIGMAN

Dating Big Bird
Animal Husbandry

Copyright Page

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JULY 2003

Copyright © 2002 by Laura Zigman

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Zigman, Laura.
Her / Laura Zigman.—1st ed.
p. cm.

1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 2. Women graduate students—Fiction.
3. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 4. Jealousy—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3576.I39 H47 2002
813’.54—dc21 2001053985

eISBN: 978-0-307-42620-8

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