LILY

AT FIRST IT FELT good, in a sky-diving-before-the-parachute-malfunctions kind of way, to have the words out of her. I’m in love with him. But since Silas had left with the kids and the car to get groceries for dinner, she’d found herself in a new position: facing the unknown. Would they get divorced? Would Sean and Mickey spend their last couple of years at home shuttling between two new houses, their bedrooms painted the same as their originals in a thin attempt at normalcy? Would she introduce them to Gavin? Would she even be with him? Sure, they had spent many an afternoon in their motel bed, tangled up in sheets and sticky promises about the future. But those were motel promises. Everyone knows you can’t believe anything said in a motel bed.

But then there she was, not in a motel but in her husband’s family’s summer home—her summer home—and the words had been said, splattered on the knotted wood and the picture frames that needed a light dusting.

And she was alone.

She texted Mickey and Sean she was going home for an early-morning meeting with the gallery’s summer staff and threw her toiletries and sweats into a bag. It would be better for the kids if she and Silas had a night apart to cool off, to adjust to the inconvenience of all that truth. But really, when Silas stood in front of her and demanded she tell him how she could do this to his family, she finally saw the truth she had ignored all along.

Lily had spent her whole life carving herself into the perfect shape for him, hacking off whatever parts got in his way. The concave to his convex. Because that’s what it meant to be a wife, a mother. Because marriage required sacrifice. Because together, they made one, more complete shape. But when she looked into his eyes then, she knew what that voice in her had always known: Silas wanted the empty parts of her, the parts made for his comfort. But not the rest. The part of her that wasn’t holes.

Maybe the answer wasn’t a different man at all, but a different her. Or maybe the detonated foxhole of her life was the kind of bad she needed to feel instead of an answer, and to expect one man to fix it just by smiling was delusional. Maybe even dangerous.

But at that moment, Lily didn’t care.

“I’m starving,” she said to the empty bedroom.

And she threw her bag over her shoulder and walked out the door.

PEYOTE