“But that is them. This is me and they”—she waved the paper—“have me out to be some bizarre hero, while I cheated on my husband.” She choked on the words and started to sob.

Carol Anne wrapped her arms around her. “How is Phil?”

“He’s here, but he won’t really talk to me—just once and it was a disaster. How can I blame him? Damn, he never talked anyway. How could I expect him to listen to me now?”

“Because it’s important, that’s why.”

“What if he leaves?”

“He won’t leave. He’ll do what he considers the right thing.”

“I don’t want it to be a responsibility, for God’s sake.”

“He loves you. He’ll stay for that, too.”

“If he loved me, he’d talk about it—he’d listen to me.”

“You can’t expect him to change just like that—to hear what you have to say when he’s hurt and pissed off and—”

“Betrayed.”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“What if he never listens? What if he walks around acting cold and fulfilling his responsibilities, but never—”

“He will. He loves you.”

“I don’t know, Carol Anne. I don’t know.”

Amy crumpled up the newspaper and threw it on the floor.

Carol Anne pulled her closer. “Well, you did accomplish one thing. Who in the living island would have thought it would be you and your passion for saving things that would finally turn the town of Darby against Farley?”

Amy wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t find her sense of humor beneath the tears. She leaned into Carol Anne and allowed herself to be held.

Friends dropped by with dinners, believing Amy was still in bed with the lingering effects of her brave act. Amy thought that if they knew what she really suffered from—a betraying soul—they would never bring another bite. She wandered the house attempting to fill her days with more than the ache of her own sin.

The guest room appeared completely occupied by Phil—full of his belongings and smelling of him. Every morning after he left for work, she stood in the middle of the room and inhaled his scent, pushed her face into the pillow where he laid his head at night. He wasn’t sleeping well, although each evening he disappeared into the room as soon as was acceptable or as soon as Molly escaped to her own room. The telltale signs of fatigue lay on his face like a road map.

SCAD hired a substitute teacher for the remainder of the semester, leaving Amy to wander her house during the day, cook meals that brought them all to the table at night— although both Molly and Phil scattered to the far corners of their own world as soon as the dishes were done.