She could have ended it there. She should have, if it were up to Graham. But she couldn’t stop. “And I have this thing that happens to mothers sometimes. Postpartum rage.”

“. . . Postpartum depression?”

“No, rage.” Lauren tried to laugh, but it came out more like a hiccup. “They’re sort of linked. But rage is . . . you know, ragier.”

“Oh.”

For a while, she listened to the pan flute playing softly through the speakers. Clancy was probably judging her now. There was nothing less appealing than an angry woman. Depression was submissive. But rage made people think of Courtney Love. Frances Farmer. Lorena Bobbitt. Lock that crazy bitch up before she hurts someone.

“It’s surprisingly common,” Dr. Landry had said during that first therapy visit she and Graham attended together. “It’s a postpartum condition, but not that many people talk about it. Everyone expects a mom to feel sad, anxious, grumpy, overwhelmed—the anger is a surprise.”

“I’m just so worried,” Graham said. “There was even this time when . . .” He cleared his throat sheepishly, surely thinking of that night in the kitchen, then started over. “. . . We’ve hired a nanny so that Lauren is never alone with the baby.”

“I would never intend to hurt him,” Lauren had jumped in.

“Of course not,” Graham said quickly, but then looked away. “Still, it’s good to have someone else around, just in case you feel . . . overwhelmed.” Then he’d looked at Dr. Landry expectantly. “Don’t you think?”

When Dr. Landry said that seemed prudent, Graham looked vindicated. “A lot of things are expected of mothers,” Dr. Landry then added. “And often, these feelings of rage—they’re actually masking other, scarier feelings.”

“There are scarier feelings inside me?” Lauren cried. The fury she felt—and the way it came on, sneaking up on her like an orgasm—wasn’t that terrifying enough?

“Anger is often a mask for feeling overwhelmed, or scared, or sad,” Dr. Landry said. “Even feeling guilty that you aren’t doing things right as a new mom.”

Lauren thought she’d rock motherhood. She’d read all the right books, gone to the right classes. Granted, she didn’t intend on the game not selling, nor did she intend on Graham getting a job that kept him away from the house eighteen hours a day. And of course she didn’t count on birthing a baby without her husband in the fucking room. But those were the only glitches. The only complications. Where had this anger been hiding the other thirty-nine years of her life? What if she never went back to her old self? And the thing she’d done this summer in the kitchen—the thing she’d almost done, the thing Graham had reeled her in from, the thing she hated to think about—what if she did that again?

“There’s nothing wrong with rage.”