Mitch welcomed these changes; the challenges work provided engaged him intellectually and architectural problems provided a great distraction from bleaker thoughts. His newfound travel schedule gave him a fabulous excuse to get out of the house every few weeks and forget about the issues at home. In his mind, those issues all centered around Carolyn’s inability to shake her grief. She was an expert at hiding her true feelings from everyone in the world except Mitch, and so, in the privacy of their home, a pall was cast, and little by little it was starting to take a toll on their marriage. However, the issues didn’t all originate with Carolyn.

Mitch was confused and frustrated by the way things were. He had grown weary of encouraging Carolyn to put things behind her, the way he had. He’d read the books on the various stages of grief, as had Carolyn, and they had each attended a few meetings of a support group that was held at a local church. Upon occasion she would be fine for a few days, or even an entire week, and then something would happen and she would be brought right back to the moment when she had learned of Rachel’s death. She hardly ever slept through the night anymore, seemed distracted all the time, and, of course, cried regularly. And he noticed that she did not want to leave the house by herself, not even to run a few errands. Some of her behavior was downright scary.

One day in March, he stopped at the house unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, right before the boys were due home from school, and heard her in the basement listening to that final phone message from Rachel on the answering machine. The fact that she was listening to it was understandable, and he could appreciate why it was so important to her, but in the five minutes Mitch stood there, he overheard her replay it at least ten times. He could hear her weeping, but chose to head back to the office rather than try to deal with it. Of course he felt terribly guilty about abandoning her, but by now he was beginning to feel it was fruitless to attempt to comfort her. Lately, when he would talk to her about how things were starting to deteriorate in the family, they would simply wind up arguing. A few times in the last month, she had simply forgotten to get Frankie off the school bus, and she’d been called to pick him up back at school. For a conscientious mother like Carolyn, this would have been unthinkable in the past. Thus far, most of these issues had been fairly minor, but they were increasing in frequency, and he was frustrated by his inability to get her to talk honestly about what was going on with her.