Deep breaths didn’t cure you of the desire to disappear or cry or scream. But they dulled it enough so you could go about your day looking and acting like a relatively normal person. I called them Nature’s Advil.

Once in physical therapy, I’d asked Birdie if she ever used the deep breathing trick on herself. “Like when people touch your stomach without asking,” I’d said. Birdie was six months pregnant and hated that.

“Deep breaths don’t work for that,” she’d said, putting a bandage on my hand where I’d scraped it falling down the physiotherapy stairs and then had a swearing, crying meltdown.

“I calmly tell those people to unhand me or die,” Birdie went on. “Deep breaths only work if the rage is coming from inside the house.” She tapped me on the chest.

Birdie was always saying weird stuff like that. She was going to confuse the hell out of her baby when it was old enough to have problems. Still, I didn’t know how I would have gotten through the summer without her. I couldn’t break down in front of my parents because I knew it killed them, and Josie didn’t remotely understand, and Colleen tried, she really did, but watching her go off to class or rehearsal just made me feel worse. And then, of course, in July I stopped talking to her altogether.

I was discharged from physical therapy in July, too, since I could walk fine. I hadn’t seen Birdie since.

The deep breaths had done the trick, dulling the rage to a quiet rumble.

At another red light, I checked my rearview mirror. Jude was behind me in the old white SUV, bopping away to a song I couldn’t hear. I still didn’t understand how he could be so casual about something he invested so much of his time in. I wondered if he worried about anything, ever.

As I made my way home, Jude followed along behind me. I figured he lived in one of the gazillion developments on this side of town, until I made the right turn into my neighborhood and he was still in my rearview mirror.

As I pulled into my driveway, his SUV passed by, turning around at the stop sign and circling back, coming to a rest at the house directly across from mine.

I slowly got out of my car.

“Howdy, neighbor,” Jude yelled, the knowing smile at full wattage now.

CHAPTER FIVE

SNIPPETS OF OUR CONVERSATIONS fired rapidly in my head: Jude asking if I’d ever seen him before, me calling him a stranger, his praise of my observational skills—sarcastic praise, I now realized. Damn.

“How long have you lived there?” I asked warily.

Jude walked across the street to me. “Only three years.”