“Do you understand?” she asked.

“You mean … you mean like S and M.”

She blushed at the letters. “Disciplined,” she said. “With belts and whips and paddles.”

She saw the words slice through him, and despite the fact that he was trying to put on a brave face, feign understanding, she knew he was repulsed. His body was suctioning in on itself, and she could see his chest concave. “Oh,” he said.

“And there’s other stuff,” she said. “I like to be tied and cuffed and … and shamed.” She felt the word grasp the back of her head, force her chin up, her eyes open.

“Shamed?”

“Made to say things … and do things.” Her body weakened, her mind flooded.

“Okay,” he said.

“No; it’s not okay.”

He ran his palms down the front of his jeans, scratched at the denim. “Well,” he said. “Maybe we can get help … or something.”

“No,” she said quickly. For weeks she had felt like an addict, stealing pleasure as if it were illegal. It was maddening. She had created this life to remedy the last, and now she was backpedaling through spaces she had determinedly left behind. She refused to trade one guilt for another. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. She was acutely aware of the irony of her words, how she had stared at that scrap of paper with Devesh’s numbers and said the very same thing, but then she thought she could manufacture a life, thought she knew what the new Josie would want. But there was no new Josie. There was only the one that had always been, and this self held many selves, the little girl and the big girl and all the others in between, each snuggled inside the next like Russian nesting dolls.

“You don’t even want to try?” he asked.

“I have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, kicked at the molding with his boot. “Go where?”

She hadn’t thought about this, but the answer now seemed clear.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HER FATHER HAD HIRED A FULL-TIME COOK AND MAID, BUT JOSIE told her to take a few weeks off, and now Josie stood in the kitchen slicing tomatoes and scrambling egg whites and settling into the heady smell of sautéed onions and brewing coffee.

“Dad,” she yelled. “Dad!”

“I’m here, I’m here,” he said and kissed her on the cheek. “When did you become your mother?” he joked.

She socked him playfully on the arm. “Be nice.”

He had lost a lot of weight, and his eyes looked hollow and sunken. Still, he was working again, and for the last weeks Josie had made him elaborate breakfasts and packed him full lunches, and he had started to kid her that she was going to make him fat.

“I have a dinner meeting tonight,” he said. Josie poured him a cup of coffee. “What are you going to do?”