In my fantasy-Adirondack, I see and hear another seal plunge into the water off the platform floating in the canal. Aubrey loves the seals. She wanted to pet or even kiss one when we were out on the boat and a pup sidled up next to our rowboat. I smile at that memory and pull a bottle of Maker’s Mark up to my lips. I’m not a fancy drunk. Like all managers in my office, I do only what’s necessary to get the job done. I take steps one at a time and never backtrack.

As I drink, I notice the lights go on in the Chrysanthemum, the little middle cabin Teresa Dibley is staying in with her grandkids. Off, then on. Off again. Those kids must be a nightmare for their grandmother. But a nightmare insufficient to keep my thoughts from bouncing back to Sophie’s affair. Affair. God, I hate that word. It legitimizes a deep betrayal by casting it as if it were either wonderful or nothing at all. A love affair. An extramarital affair. A business affair. A gala affair. Put one’s affairs in order.

A sorry state of affairs.

I imagine putting a note in my Maker’s Mark bottle and tossing it into the waters of Puget Sound to let the world know how I feel about my wife.

Goddamn you, Sophie. You really fucked up our lives. Big-time.

I don’t, of course. Instead, I drink. I’m not feeling angry at all. Just empty inside.

A car horn. Another, then quickly a third. Terrible harmony.

Oh shit. The bridge deck opens before me as traffic slides away up the span.

I throw the car in gear and accelerate, waving frantically over my shoulder before realizing I don’t give a fuck if the honkers are angry with me.

Did I fall asleep, or into some kind of fugue state? The Maker’s Mark is still packed away in its box with a bag of trash on the seat behind me, so at least I didn’t actually drink.

I’m left with a hangover, though—that yawning emptiness my dream or fantasy left inside me.

I pull myself together and stop at the Mobil off the exit to Sophie’s folks’ place. I slide my credit card and top off the tank. It takes all of two minutes. A girl with a bad sunburn gives me a nod while she waits for her Camry to fill up and puts her empty water bottle and fast-food wrappers into the receptacle by the pumps. Before I drive off, I follow suit, pushing down hard on my own garbage.

“I practically live in my car,” she says.

Sophie used to say the same thing before she got the job at Starbucks, when she commuted to Microsoft in Redmond.

“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

ADAM

Frank and Helen live in the same house on the course of the Twin Lakes Golf and Country Club in Federal Way that they did when they brought Sophie home from the hospital. It’s impressive in its own way, a sprawling rambler with a cobblestone driveway and landscaping that proves a control freak lives there. Most of the shrubbery is sphere perfect. The lawn is as flawless as a pool table. I feel each cobblestone bump in my stomach when I drive up to park. I make my way to the front door and try the knob, but it’s locked. It’s about Aubrey’s bedtime, so I half hope that she is sleeping and I won’t have to face her. Seeing Frank will be enough. I expect that he’ll find a new batch of blame for me. He’s resourceful that way.