Edward was already sound asleep and snoring when Vivian entered their bedroom, the light from the hallway behind her outlining her silhouette in the doorframe. The room was filled with his deep, even, vibrating nasal growl. She flipped off the hall light, then waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark before stepping delicately over the rug. She stood on his side of the bed, watching his torso rise and fall in time with the snores.

She used to watch him sleep like this when they were first married. When she couldn’t believe her luck in finding a guy like him. He, naturally, fell asleep immediately after their lovemaking, and Vivian would prop herself up on her elbow and gaze at the details of his face. His dark, wild eyebrows, the straight, proud nose that ended in just the cutest point. She’d sometimes take the tip of her index finger and lightly tap the point of his nose, making him snort and snuffle before settling back into his rhythmic snore.

She now studied the eyebrows that had grown wilder and started to sprout grays here and there, and the lines that had deepened in his cheeks and around the corners of his mouth, and the lips, which were looking thinner beneath the coarse mustache. Her eyes roamed around the hairline, which had stretched itself from a sexy widow’s peak into a sharp V over the last decade, and then to his bulging Adam’s apple, vibrating on and off with the snoring.

The alarm clock fit neatly in her hand as she slid it from the bedside table. The smooth face rounded against her palm, the glass sticking to her skin as her fingers curled around the metal edges. The light ticking of the clock matched the pounding in her head. Tick, tick, tick, tick, pound, pound, pound, pound. She watched the vulnerable Adam’s apple and weighed the clock, the way a professional baseball pitcher might weigh the baseball in his hand before winding up, lightly raising and dropping it in a slow, measured bounce.

Chapter 8

1936

Vivian couldn’t keep all her parts from jiggling and bouncing as the Model A jiggled and bounced its way down Henrietta Street that mild winter afternoon. “It’s the Roadster,” Edward boasted loudly above the engine. “Got it for a song.” That was no surprise, really, since newer models had come out from Ford and most people were more interested in having the latest thing. Edward’s car was only five years old, but he drove it a lot and it tended to rattle. “Was that song ‘Pennies from Heaven’?” she asked with an eyebrow arched, thinking that paying more than a few cents for this jalopy was nuts. A quick scramble to cover up the criticism, she tilted her head toward him with a winning grin. Edward smirked at the slight, unfazed. “It’s got a rumble seat,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down.

Vivian was grateful for Vera’s hand-me-down wool coat (not the latest thing, either) that kept some, if not all, of her jiggling and bouncing at least a little under control. “Vivian, don’t wiggle around like a whore,” her mother had snapped once, surprising Vivian with the harsh words. She usually just huffed and grumbled her discontent. Either way, Vivian tried to ignore her. Every one of those little criticisms left chips in Vivian’s self-esteem. By the time she was old enough to be considered a grown-up, her self-esteem, if she could’ve seen it, might’ve looked a little like a wedge of Swiss cheese.