“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess close to cowed, like when he talked to her his eyes would slide away and mornings sometimes he’d even look down when he saw me, like he was fixing to apologize.” Etta spoke in a rush now, as though speech were catharsis. “I remember once they were in the dining room, talking real low, and then she got up from the table and left him there. He went to the liquor cabinet for a bottle of brandy. I saw him staring in at his library with the bottle in one hand, like he couldn’t decide what to do. Then he just stepped inside and closed the door behind him. I should have felt sorry for him, he seemed so lonely. But I saw what was happening to her.”

“What was that?”

“It was like she was falling apart. She was pretty and so young.” Etta spoke the word feelingly, almost in anger, her hands becoming small fists. “She should have been laughing, going out with someone who wanted her, not wasting in a dark house, day after day and year after year just drying up, not being loved or touched. It’s a waste that should happen.”

My head was pounding. “Sure, now. It is.”

Etta nodded fiercely. “She’d walk from room to room, looking around like it was all strange and she was a prisoner. You don’t have to be in jail to be in prison: I already knew that. She began staying in bed until he’d gone. One morning I brought breakfast to her room, hoping she’d eat. She was still in bed, holding a man’s framed picture in both hands. She looked up and gave me a funny smile, like, ‘It’s no use pretending, is it?’” Etta’s own smile was slight and sad. “That was the first time she really noticed me—me, not a maid. After that we began to talk.”

“Do you know who the man was?”

“She never said, but I think maybe a man from Grangeville. From the picture he was pushing forty, good-looking except for his eyes: clear enough to see through and cold as a snake’s. It chilled me to look at them. But all she told me was that she’d run from loving him, that he was part of her but evil and that he wanted to put her on a shelf away from people to make up for things he couldn’t have. It didn’t make sense, all of it. But I think he was the reason she married Mr. Cantwell.”

“Did she say that?”

“She just said she married him thinking he’d never lie or hurt her, and then moved her shoulders like she’d been wrong. She didn’t say it angry; it was sadder than that, and surer. A few days later she started going out.”

“In what sense?”