“Keep this in mind,” she told him in anger. “Your last shirt won’t have any pockets. Keep that thought in your miserly mind.”

Maybe that worried him. Maybe when he conjured the image, he imagined himself in a shroud. If so, he hadn’t let on.

For Gwen, the episode was a beginning: a turning point that had taken a long while to be met head-on. Her will began to clash with Brigg’s—she experienced this almost physically—but in brutal silence. Neither would back off. Confrontation was always on the verge, about to happen. For Gwen, it was like being one of two rival actors on stage, each locked in a role that could not be viewed by others but was known intimately by both players as necessary to their own death struggle. The most crucial action was yet to come, the climax inevitable, no matter how long it might take.

She bided her time and put her energy into raising the twins. The year the boys turned six, she began to read professional ads in the Wilna Creek Times. She applied to Spinney’s for a full-time job as bookkeeper. She was hired immediately and arranged after-school daycare. Her salary was her own. She opened a bank account in her name only. Brigg didn’t stop bullying, but he couldn’t force her to stop working. Instead, he made fun of her; to him, her job was a joke.

But the situation had changed: she no longer had to ask him for money to buy underwear for herself or the boys, or for twenty dollars to go out for dinner and a movie with a few women who got together occasionally after work. In those days, it was possible to partake of a meal and a movie for twenty dollars. She wondered if Brigg had enjoyed humiliating her, enjoyed forcing her to ask for money during the boys’ preschool years. He’d been successful, in part. She never invited friends home; she learned to rely entirely on herself. Gradually, whenever she went out, she went alone.

WHEN SHE CARRIED in Brigg’s clothes to have him dressed for the casket, the director at the funeral parlour made no comment about the shirt pocket. Maybe he didn’t notice that the opening of the pocket had been stitched across—trouser pockets, too, also jacket. She’d sewed them all up tight. She could hardly have brought in a shroud, though she’d have preferred to see Brigg wrapped in one. He went to his grave without a single pocket; she made sure of that.

In any case, what did she care about what the embalmer thought—the embalmer or whoever it was who’d dressed Brigg’s corpse? The people who work in funeral parlours must have plenty of inside stories. Gwen wondered about the topics of their conversations at conventions and family vacations. What, exactly, was discussed?

“Arhh,” she heard.

Or maybe the sound was hargh or haw.

“Haw,” she said back. “Haw bloody haw.”

“Haw,” Rico said. “Bloody haw.”

Gwen started to laugh. She laughed and laughed while Rico stared. He began to run back and forth on his perch. Finally—perhaps intentionally, to staunch her outburst—he attempted to create the noise of the gasps she was making between breaths.