With Just Jan on board, things returned to a more normal routine. The sex got better, and more frequent. They took a few trips, all together: Just Jan down at the pool with Dashiell under an umbrella, covered head to toe in light layers and a tiny floppy hat; Sutton and Ethan on the balcony, eating grapes and drinking champagne. It almost felt familiar. It almost felt right.

So right, Ethan started a new book. He started many new books, and generally grew tetchy and bored after a few weeks. This time, though, he’d stuck to it, and there were pages, actual pages, on the floor of his office, waiting patiently in their manuscript box for their brethren to arrive.

Ethan was a madman when he wrote, comically Einstein-esque in his eccentricity. He worked for hours, paying no attention to the normal order of things; sunrises and sunsets and bedtimes of others were irrelevant. His hair stood on end; he forgot to shower. He needed odd foods at odd hours. Eggplant parmesan at ten in the morning. Pecan-maple pancakes and crispy bacon at four in the afternoon. Always from scratch and with high-end organics, nothing premade, store-bought, or delivery would do.

Sutton cooked whatever he wanted, because that’s what good wives did. She cooked and cleaned and mothered him, and sometimes she even had time to mother her child, as well.

She began to wonder if she was in an abusive relationship. What would she say to a therapist? He pays for everything, hired me a perfectly wonderful nanny. But now he won’t let me do my work, and he makes me cook for him. All the time.

She couldn’t tell the truth, obviously. That would never do.

She decided, pound for pound, her life was simply comical. Her career could wait. Once he finished the book, she’d be able to return to her schedule. What was a few months, after all? She did so love to cook.

And then he’d gotten stuck. Ethan always got stuck. But this time, it was deeper into the meat of the novel, the important part, where the main character reveals himself to the reader for the very first time, and is judged. A seminal moment. In her brand of novels, it was called a plot point, but in his, it was seminal. Even their language had to be separate, different, his more important, always, always.

As sudden as an unexpected storm and an ear-shattering clap of thunder, his flow ended. No more fingers clattering on the keyboard at all hours, no more random food requests. He slunk around the house, hollow-eyed and pale-cheeked, pulling books off the shelves in the library, leaving them scattered on the chairs by the window that overlooked the front porch.

She offered to help. She’d helped him before. Tell me what the issue is. Let me see if I can come up with something.