But Wilma was cold to him when he arrived home, sniping at him for working late again. When he told her about the letter from Jack, she first attacked him on the point that he had not told her about it immediately, and then, after a moment, began sobbing to the point that Harry almost called Dr. Seguin again. “Don’t you dare!” she man-aged to choke out, slamming out the kitchen door. They watched in the dusky light as she ran to and collapsed in the earth of her untended garden. Harry moved as if he would go after her, but John stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, and told him, with more certainty than he felt, “Just let her be, son.”

All that weekend, she wouldn’t speak to him. When he approached her with a soft hand on her shoulder, she glared at him like he was trespassing on her private property. Saturday night, when he rolled over in bed and touched her hip to kiss her good night, she snarled, “Don’t touch me.” Sunday, she got angry with Jinny for playing the phonograph too loudly and dumped neighbors’ casseroles onto the kitchen floor.

He was relieved when it was Monday morning and time to go back to work. He walked into the office to the aroma of Florence’s fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, and that evening, after everyone else had gone home, despite all of his declarations to himself that he would never again, he laid her back on his desk and shuddered with the pleasure of her, wallowing in her sweet fleshy comfort. The way she smiled when he entered her, the way she met his every thrust! Crowning him again a king!

He was weak, he knew it. Rutting with her like a teenager. She enjoyed him more than Wilma ever had; every time he saw her, he tingled with it. Got careless, cupping her breast in his hand even when she came into his office in the middle of the day with customers and employees milling about in the lobby. He was invincible—no one would ever find out, he was sure.

One night, after another screaming fit of Wilma’s, he went out for a walk, and found himself at her house. When she opened the door to his knock, her astonishment was plain.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

And so they had one evening of unabashed, naked pleasure in her soft widow’s bed.

“I’ve got to stop this,” he moaned as he lay back, spent, on her pillow, as she rested in the crook of his arm, tracing circles on his chest with her fingernail. “I’m getting—addicted! To you!”