People either knew what Vicki was carrying or they’d ask, which was worse.

“What’s a SAD-Lite?” one of Vicki’s colleagues had inquired during her first road trip with the lamp.

“It’s a thing…for my laptop,” Vicki had responded, unprepared for the question. “It hooks up to my laptop. For wireless.”

The man frowned suspiciously.

“Is it one of those depression lamps?” he asked, ignoring her answer. “My wife’s brother has one.”

“No, I said it was for my computer.”

“Hmm,” the man grunted in disbelief.

Just before her second road trip with the lamp, Vicki remembered the guitar case in her spare room. She’d bought the instrument during a day trip to Ithaca when she was still with her college boyfriend Rich. He’d been in a band and told her that if she learned to play, she could join them on a song or two, as if that were an attractive offer. She could barely keep a straight face when she watched Rich’s band perform its rock covers and six original songs, three of which were about taking a woman’s virginity.

Vicki had told Rich, as she shelled out fifty dollars for the old instrument, that she would use the guitar to start a rival band with Hannah so they could finally make use of their long list of fake band names. But she and Hannah always had better things to do, and the Takamine had gone untouched for years.

But it now served a greater purpose. The guitar case turned out to be an appropriately sized, inconspicuous vessel for the lamp. So far none of her coworkers had demanded to see the instrument. They never asked her why she brought it on the road. As far as they were concerned, she was simply committed to her new hobby.

If only her coworkers knew that she didn’t even know how to hold a guitar. If only they knew that that the thing inside the case had been purchased to prevent her from spiraling into an emotional abyss.

Vicki had told Hannah about the SAD lamp when they spoke on the phone a few weeks before the wedding, just so there were no surprises. Hannah had called to find out whether Vicki wanted to share a hotel room on the night of the wedding instead of sleeping in separate, expensive quarters.

Vicki didn’t need to split the cost of anything. Unlike Hannah, whose New York City rent devoured her income, Vicki saved most of what she earned. She made a respectable corporate salary, which in Rochester made her rich. And because she was always traveling for work, she hardly spent any of her own money. Meals and cars were always expensed. Her utility bills were low because she was rarely home.

She decided quickly that she would share the room with Hannah and pay for it herself, just so her broke friend didn’t have to worry about it. Hannah had already paid too much for Bee’s high-end bridesmaid’s dress and the fifty-two-dollar bra that, Hannah had explained, was a wedding requirement.