“Tell your dad I’ll be right out.” She scurried toward the bedroom to change into something clean and ironed. The deep voices of her husband and son echoed across the house. She stared at her closet, at the pile of laundry. She pulled out a red sweater; it was wrinkled. She yanked a blue silk shirt from a hanger, but there was a crease right down the front. Finally she found a smooth brown cashmere sweater, tugged it over her head, and emerged from the closet.

She entered the hall; her smile fell before it fully crossed her face. The empty sound of the house told her; they were gone, had left without saying goodbye. She walked unsteadily into the kitchen, loneliness now settling deeper than she’d ever known.

She opened the door to the garage and stared at the empty space where Phil’s car had been parked ten minutes before. He must have already been packed, ready to go. A slimy patch of oil shone under the fluorescent garage light.

“Well, then.” She went into the kitchen, fished around under the sink and pulled out a bottle of Lysol, paper towels and a scouring pad. She walked back into the garage, squatted in the empty parking spot and scrubbed at the oil spot until clean gray concrete came through. She stood, smiled.

“Okay, fixed.”

She dumped the cleaning supplies under the sink, stood in the pile-strewn kitchen. “Well, then. I guess I just need to iron all those wrinkled clothes now.”

She walked through the house on her heels, into her closet to pluck down every single shirt she owned—then piled them according to color, material and texture. She grabbed the ironing board from behind the belt rack, then plugged in the iron—a wedding present that hadn’t been used as often as the fine china. Her motto had been “If it needs ironing, it goes to the dry cleaners.” But not now; now she would do everything correctly.

She began to iron one shirt at a time, beginning with white and moving to colors—bright to dark.

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

“I told her.”

“What?” Nick started at the sound of his wife’s voice. He’d watched the house, assumed he’d correctly timed his visit to retrieve more clothes. Eliza was supposed to be at Alex’s and Max’s wrestling match. He turned from his dust-coated backpack lying on the Oriental carpet. He just needed clean underwear, clean shirts.

“I went to the hospital and told her.”

“Told who what?”

“Amy—that you were drunk the night you ran over that woman. You left that part out, didn’t you? You wanted her to believe you were the victim of some horrible twist of fate that took her away from you.”

Nick stood, grabbed some clean shirts from a drawer. “No, I don’t believe that, Eliza. I believe you took her away from me with your manipulative lies.”