“I don’t understand guys freaking out about going bald,” the boy says, studying the dark, tousled density of his hair in the mirror. “Henry Miller? Brilliant writer, genius, a real ladies’ man—and bald as an egg. You know why women didn’t care? Because he didn’t care. It’s just like a job interview: you know you’ve got flaws, you know you’re not perfect, but that stuff doesn’t matter if you know you can do the job. So you walk in with confidence and say what you have to say. Speaking of that, Miller was hardly your average Joe because he was ‘diabolically truthful,’ but he got his job done. ‘I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.’ You know what he was referring to?”

Stop talking, she thinks. She’s sitting with her legs crossed on the low table meant for a suitcase at the foot of the bed. Her purse is beside her. His backpack is on the floor next to the closet.

“America,” Todd says, turning around to face her. With his arms hanging limp at his sides, he lifts one foot, then the other, knocking his heels against the carpet and causing both his sneakers to fold up and fall off.

She’s done this before: kicked away from who she thought she was, jumped into who she thought she wasn’t. She’s found herself, repeatedly, in a skin that isn’t hers. In the eight years that she’s been married to D.J., she’s kissed him goodbye on his way to work in the morning and then gotten into her car and driven straight out of Savannah no less than a dozen times. Always heading south, into Florida. Sometimes to a restaurant, sometimes to a bar, occasionally to a hotel room and a situation like this one. D.J., in a way, is a willing participant in these ventures. If she isn’t there when he gets home from work, if she pulls into the driveway long after she should have started preparing dinner, he asks where she’s been, but he doesn’t press for more information when she responds, “On a drive.” “The sky was so beautiful today,” she sometimes adds. Or “I’ve never seen leaves so green.” Like any sensible person, he wants his life to hold together, and like Karen, he is willing to settle for imperfection in order to make that happen. With him, she has pretended to pray for pregnancy. Privately, she prays for the opposite. They’ve continued to attend church and have become pillars of the community. There have been seven subsequent revivals. He’s a good husband, she loves him, and the fact that she has remained childless all these years has become the strongest confirmation of her own brand of faith. God, she believes, understands.