The leave of absence turned more permanent once we had Emily, and we left the city behind for the suburbs. When we did, I still deluded myself into believing I was just one more milestone, one more year, away from going back to work.

Now that the kids were older, I’d decided to dip my toe back into the social work world and begun applying for jobs. Six months later, I was still applying.

I needed more, something else to tether me to the person who I was, rather than the person I was expected to be. And yet, here I was.

The cursor blinked accusingly at me, shaming me for not finding a way to do what I used to love.

You. Failure.

Did you really think you could have it all?

My fingers hesitated over the keyboard, anxiety and inertia plaguing me once again, whispering that my social work days were behind me, that I was trying to force something that didn’t exist, like desperately squeezing a ketchup bottle for drops and feeling only air come out.

I shook my head, closed my laptop, and stood up. Something would come along; I was due for a stroke of luck.

But for now, I was out of ideas.

—

Rocky and I started down the darkened street, the only lights the few gas lamps left over from the sixties. We had one in our yard when we moved in but noticed a faint gas smell in the air periodically from the driveway. We had the gas company come out, and they told us it was leaking and had to be shut off. After that we had a nonfunctional gaslight at the end of our driveway, but when I heard the cost to remove it, I decided it could stay even though it felt a little like having a broken-down car on cinder blocks sitting there. At least the HOA hadn’t yelled at us about that . . . yet.

A few blocks over, I could hear a group of neighbors on someone’s front porch, having drinks. Whispering Farms was the kind of subdivision where you’d find porch beers in the summer and hot toddies around a firepit in the winter. It was socially engineered to keep people in the bubble, for it had everything you could want.

Rocky and I walked in the direction of Jess’s house first, preparing to round the block toward Liz’s. I had grabbed a bottle of Pedialyte from my fridge before I left and planned to leave it on her doorstep to help with her hangover or flu or whatever it was. The smell from her backyard lingered in the air, like clothes that had been left in the washer for too long. A rotting, old, cloying smell that made it hard to inhale.