My stomach mutters in dismay.

He leaves the bathroom. I follow. I pull on my robe from the back of the door. It’s heavy and fluffy, and in seconds I’m sweating.

“You should have asked me about renting the carriage house,” I say to his back.

Ken pauses in the doorway. Turns. His expression is faintly surprised. When’s the last time we had an argument? I can’t even recall. I’m so very, very careful never to contradict him or let him down or be anything other than an opinionless, agreeable automaton.

“We’ve talked about this, Jewelann. We have a perfectly good apartment in that carriage house, sitting empty, doing nothing for us but adding to our school taxes.”

“It’s a dump.”

“He’s going to fix it up, and we’ll end up with something better than we started with.”

I clutch at the neck of the robe, even though I’m overheating. I taste salt when I lick my lips, and also the coppery undertone of blood, as though I’ve bitten the tip of my tongue. “I don’t like the idea of a stranger living on the property.”

“But he’s not a stranger,” Ken says. “He’s your old school buddy.”

He knows.

He can’t know.

He knows, I think, watching him study me with a flat, inscrutable gaze.

“I haven’t seen him since we graduated.” My protest is weak. My husband has made his decision, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

“Well, that’s a lie, isn’t it?”

My lips part, but no words come out. Ken laughs, wagging his head. Then his finger.

“You saw him last Saturday at the reunion, didn’t you?”

Relief weakens my knees. “Right. Of course.”

Ken puts his hands on his hips, fingers angling toward his crotch. One knee bends a little, cocking his body toward mine. “We talked about this several times. It doesn’t make any sense to keep the place empty. It’s just a place to fill up with more junk. In a few more years, Eli will be off to school, and we’ll be thinking about downsizing. Best to get the place in order before then.”

He’s talking about the normal accumulation of belongings that happens over time, but he doesn’t have to say more than that. Once again, I’m reminded of how I’ve trapped myself here. In this house. In this marriage. This life.

A rat will chew off its own leg to get free.

What will I do?

CHAPTER
12

THE HANDBAG HAS some scuff marks on it, but it’s Etienne Aigner, and I have a soft spot for it because my mother used to love that designer. I don’t have a bag like this, not exactly like this, and there’s a matching belt and a wallet that is almost identical to one I have already, but this one is in the original box with soft tissue paper surrounding it and a receipt from 1986. I buy all of it. The woman at the table in the garage charges me twenty dollars and reminds me that if I come back tomorrow, the last day of the estate sale, everything will be fifty percent off or more.