And Thomas wasn’t the type to throw anything out a window, even something he might want to hide. He was the law-abiding sort who was burdened by other people’s recklessness—the one who picked up after a neighbor’s dog and who trimmed the overgrown trees that impaired visibility next to the stop sign. He always did more than anyone else, including me, and then said he didn’t mind. He appeared to mind a great deal, though. There was the huff of overwork, the passive–aggressive complaint of various physical maladies brought on by overexertion, the plain old undercurrent of displeasure, and yet, much to my bewilderment and frustration, he continued on this ever-spinning wheel, being the bothered good citizen and burdened husband and father. It seemed simple: Get off the wheel. Still, those simple things—they’re never simple to the poor soul wrestling with them. Think of the energy we spend in our private, raging battles that seem downright ludicrous to everyone else.

  I respected that man, more than I can say. Did I mention he was a vegetarian, too? And he always recycled. All that goodness—a lifetime of it—it would get tiring, wouldn’t it? Being such a prince of a man would be exhausting. Honestly, I was exhausted by it. Each was a hallmark of moral superiority in Seattle—the good-neighborliness, the abundant vegetables, the reusable bags; we only needed to open a microbrewery or start using the words farm-to-table and we could rise to the ranks of religious leadership in the Emerald City, hit the hip, slick pages of Seattle magazine. I never confessed my own lapses in judgment, though: the times I’d forgotten a plastic bag for Hugo on our walks, the containers I didn’t want to rinse and sort, the beef—the fast-food beef, no less—that I devoured. Here, you could maybe get away with eating beef as long as the cow had a good life and you sent him to college beforehand.

  Not that Thomas would have cared about these transgressions. He wouldn’t have. He might have edged toward maddening self-sacrifice and a stubborn insistence on being underappreciated, but for the most part, he was also truly generous. I’m not even sure why I couldn’t admit my own imperfections, aside from the fact that a person’s constant goodness can feel like recrimination. You hide your little failings.

  I set my cup in the sink. I had to find out what was going on. The house was so quiet that I could hear the upstairs hall clock ticking. I knew deep inside, or maybe not so deep at all, right at the surface, that Thomas had given up the grueling goodness and morality. I knew it because it made sense—it made a lot of things clear, because he hadn’t been himself for a while. Those long runs he’d been doing, for one. He hadn’t run since just after Amy was born, but lately he’d lace up his shoes and put on the kind of loose running shorts people didn’t wear anymore, and he’d be gone for hours. Gotta watch my heart, he’d say. What was Dad, fifty-five? He’d also turn his back to me in bed after saying good night. You get used to that when you’ve been married awhile, the various meanings of his back. The back that shouted your wrongdoings or that punished with its slightly freckled silence. But this was more back. Or, at least, a back that kept its secrets. A back that was a wall.

  And I’d hear him wake up in the night. He’d be down in the kitchen. The pantry door would squeak open, and then, next, the cupboard where we keep the glasses. I thought he was depressed. His mother had recently passed away, so of course he would be. His eyes welled up during Amy’s graduation, too, and in all the time I’d known him, I’d seen him cry only once before, at his mother’s funeral. Our friend, Dan Fallon, of Jan and Dan Fallon, told us at a barbecue one night after too much wine that he couldn’t even walk past his daughter’s room without bawling after she, their youngest, had left for college.

  We didn’t talk about this, the soundless weight that had moved in, bringing silky jogging shorts and morose stares out sunny windows. We should have, I know. But we didn’t. I made a few tries at it, but it was apparently large enough that we had to step around it. It became a thing. You know the ones. The particular, unspoken entities you feel at every curt good night or aloof how was your day. The thing follows the two of you around to every room and breathes down your neck, but you pretend with some degree of frost and unspoken fury that it’s not there. Sometimes, marriage is just too intimate for intimacy.

  I tried the pockets of the jeans Thomas had worn on Saturday, which were upstairs, neatly folded on a shelf in our bedroom closet. Then I opened his underwear drawer and fished around in there, and felt inside the satin pouches of his suit jackets. I looked in the bathroom garbage can, which Thomas had recently emptied, and then headed back down to the kitchen, straight past that ticking clock. I don’t know when it happened, but recently that hallway had begun to slope—the porch off the kitchen, too—and I could feel the unsettling tilt under my feet, a little metaphoric jab. Mike Murphy, from Phinney Contracting, said it was an issue of settling and rot, and that the foundation “needed work.” This kept me awake at night. The house I loved suddenly seemed to have a mind of its own, and I pictured it slipping farther until it sped like a toboggan (pages 30–31 of the REI catalog: ski equipment–sleds) down into Carkeek Park ravine. Shaye once had a segment of her roof collapse, back when she was married to crazy ex-husband number one, and she still slept in the house that night. I could never do that. As it was, the fact that our house had begun to shift felt like a betrayal. After all I’d given it over the years.

  The most obvious places to look for that horrible business card awaited. Of course, I didn’t want to actually find it. Outside, summer was starting and the sky was wrongly blue, and I watched the innocent petal of a magnolia blossom drift to the ground like a line in a poem. I turned my back to the window and leaned against the dishwasher and gave a disappointed look to the canisters of flour and sugar, to the cup of pencils next to the pad of paper where we wrote the grocery list, all that orderliness that had not come through for me. I shouldn’t even tell what I did next, but I will. I called for Hugo. I called out his name in the high-pitched voice that usually made him come running. I know it sounds nuts, and I didn’t expect anything from it, of course. He wasn’t going to come trotting around the corner, hoping for a treat. His ghost wouldn’t appear holding his orange ball in his mouth. That boy—I just missed him so much, my chest ached. He’d have never let anything happen to me if he could help it, and every FedEx man around knew it. He would have even protected me from this, if it were in his power.

  My voice sounded hollow and clanging in all that silence, and I embarrassed myself. Thank God people don’t see all the crazy things you do in private. I felt a little out of control, because I knew if that paper was anywhere, it would likely be in one of two remaining places—the trash can outside or, where I looked next, the kitchen garbage. I rooted past a banana peel and a half-filled coffee filter, mad at the cliché it all was, and then my phone rang. I startled, as if I was the one who’d been caught.

  I have no excuse for the fact that I answered. Answering right then was unwise. It just added a rainstorm to a bad driver on a curvy mountain road. I loved my mother, but she made my head ache. It was almost instantaneous, like eating ice cream too fast. Still, you go on eating ice cream too fast.

  “I’m glad you’re there. I have a favor,” she said, skipping straight past those pesky hellos.

  Headaches, ice cream, mountain roads—none of it mattered. I needed my mother. “Thomas is seeing someone,” I told her.

  “Like a someone-someone?”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you know.”

  I crooked the phone against my shoulder, washed the coffee grounds off my hands.

  “Jesus, are you standing under a waterfall?”

  I shut the faucet off, dried my hands on the legs of my jeans. “Is this where I’m supposed to throw his stuff on the lawn?”

  “Are you sure about this? Thomas isn’t the affair type. He’s as loyal as a pocket watch.”

  I was surprised she defended him. Men had a thousand ways of disappointing you, according to her, and she was always happy to list them. I was also surprised that the comment stung me a little. He was my pocket watch, after all. Or had been, all these years.

  “He would. He did. Is. I don’t even know.”

  “You sound awfully calm about it.”

  “I do?” I didn’t feel calm. I felt like I was holding back an avalanche with the palm of one hand. I opened the fridge and stared inside for answers. Instead of answers, there was a note I hadn’t noticed yesterday, inside the butter container. I lifted the little door. Love you, Mom, it said. Don’t worry.

  My throat got tight with tears, and I swallowed hard.

  “Are you there?” Gloria asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “What did he say about it?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Nothing? He hasn’t admitted anything?” If it were her, she’d be lighting his favorite record albums on fire by now. At least, that’s what happened with her boyfriend, Bob, when I was a kid; I remember a funny smell and the melted faces of Sonny and Cher over the Weber in our backyard.

  “I tried to get him to tell me, but he wouldn’t.”

  “Do you have proof? Did you check his email?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You have to check his email! That’ll tell you everything.”

  “I can’t. I don’t even know if I want proof. It all just seems weirdly inevitable.” How could it not? There was my mother herself, and Shaye, and that ranch, and the way history could ride along in your bloodstream.

  “Nonsense. If anyone can stay married forever, it’s you,” my mother said.

  She sounded like my sister. Shaye had said the same thing to me a million times. Maybe I was overly sensitive, but it always seemed like one of those insults disguised as a compliment. Shaye and Mom were the similar ones, from their romantic histories and Bay Area houses down to their light hair and delicate features. I resembled our father, who left just after Shaye was born, at least according to the three snapshots we had of him, the white-bordered, yellow-hued kind from the days of drive-through Kodak Fotomats. With Shaye and Mom, I was always the one in the backseat, saying, What? Who? because I couldn’t quite hear back there. Not that I entirely minded—the backseat has its benefits. More space, for one.

  “Thanks, I guess,” I said.

  “That’s not a bad thing. Anyway, I’m sure there’s some kind of mistake.”

  “I don’t think so.” I paced the perimeter of the kitchen. Some kind of mistake. I never knew how lovely that phrase was.

  “Did you hear the news?”

  “I don’t think I can take any more news.”

  “Shaye’s threatening divorce. Eric bought a sports car.”

  “Oh, no. It’s getting ridiculous over there.”

  “I told her he should’ve just painted his dick red.”

  I always seemed to forget that needing your mother and getting what you needed from your mother were separate but neighboring planets. I considered making brownies and eating the whole pan of them while polishing off a bottle of wine. The urge got worse right after what she said next.

  “That’s not what I called to tell you, though. I need you to do something for me. Remember Art Harris? Nash’s…well, I always thought they were lovers, but never mind. He called. He thinks someone should come. Her health isn’t the greatest, for one, and apparently she’s been doing some bizarre things.”

  “What kind of bizarre things?” My aunt wasn’t one for irrational acts, and it was perhaps the thing I loved most about her. She was practical. Able. Calm when angry. The antithesis of my mother.

  “She’s been taking off, causing scenes. Letting things go. There’s some crisis with the forest service about her property. I have no idea. She’s getting senile, probably. It’s shitty getting old. You’ve got to keep active, and what does she do out there? Watch the grass grow? Well, she’s always been strong-willed, to put it politely.”

  This was akin to a tornado insulting a hurricane. “Something’s wrong, then,” I said. “Because none of that sounds anything like her.” I couldn’t even fathom senility in an equation involving Nash, with her solidity and sturdy resolve. Likely it all had a purpose, if a cryptic one, though what did I know about being eighty.

  “What is she thinking, living out there alone at her age?” my mother went on. “She should have sold that place a long time ago. It’s, what, two hundred plus acres? She could’ve got a nice condo like mine. Can you imagine spending your whole life on that ranch? God, how could you stand it. And, now, Jesus, she’s the big eight-oh.”

  “Well, you’re seventy-nine.”

  “Do you know how shocking that is? If we have to get her into a home, it’s beyond me how we’ll do it. Someone’s got to go over there, assess the situation. Harris could be completely overreacting. I don’t know the guy as far as I can throw him.”

  “You’re her sister. You should be the one. And obviously I’ve got a lot going on here.”

  “You know I hate that place. I’m not good in a crisis. I don’t want to see her old and crazy. Besides, I can’t leave my students.” Gloria taught pottery three days a week at the community college near her place in San Rafael, where she and Shaye moved when Shaye married her first husband, Mathew. “You’re not working. You could take the girls! They’d love to ride the horses.”

  “They’re not seven, Mom. Amy just left for Costa Rica. Melissa’s in college. She’s got a job.”

  “You don’t! We need someone! We can’t just ignore the guy after he calls, saying there’s an emergency.”

  I gave her my response through gritted teeth and pursed lips.

  “Never mind! Fine, forget I asked.”

  We had a few more minutes of tense, meaningless conversation, which was actually only an opportunity for my mother to display by her tone of voice how I’d let her down and how she would now rise above it. She was old, too, and I was supposed to be nicer. I reminded myself of this a hundred times. You didn’t want to have regrets. But she never seemed truly old to me, except in flashes where I noticed a slight imbalance in her walk or an unexpected difficulty when she rose from a chair. She was as large to me as ever; she would always be large, likely, even when she was gone, and after we hung up, I felt a bolt of rage jet through me. It braided together with a strand of unearned but maddeningly persistent guilt. I wouldn’t easily shake off Nash’s distress, and my mother knew it. Unlike her, I was the type to remember the birthdays of elderly relatives, the one who showed up at the airport two hours before departure, the one who never parked in handicapped spots. Someday I was going to go wild and keep my phone on just before takeoff.

  I uncorked that wine, took a swig right from the bottle like a cartoon pirate. And then I finally did it. I dug through the trash can outside.

  It was that easy, the white ball nestled up against—yes—some discarded tofu! Fucking tofu! I hated the stuff! I hated those smug gelatinous cubes, and the years of patience I’d given them shoved together and became a burning fury.

  I took the business card into the house. I sat down on that helpful bench we’d put next to the door, where a person could remove their shoes or set a stack of mail. A pair of Amy’s colorful flats waited on that bench like a hopeful boy at a dance. I didn’t want to open that ball of paper, and I did want to. These confused desires made my hands shake. The card had dried, and much of the print had been lost among our joint laundry. But there. You could see it clear enough. Mary Evans, it read. Eastside P—That was all. No clue what came after the P, and much of the phone number was missing. The lost alphabet letters were likely trapped in the suffocating hell of dryer-vent fuzz, and good luck to them.

  Jarret Somebody, financial services, eh, Thomas? It wasn’t even a good lie! And for God’s sake, if you’re going to lie, have enough self-respect to make it believable. Make it have legs and a backbone, make it stand up, instead of pulling some rubbery story out of your childish ass. Cover your tracks, at least.

  Rage gathered, and it filled me with an energy I never knew I possessed. I could lift a car off a baby. I could strangle Thomas and Mary Evans with my bare hands, if I wasn’t already utterly done and finished with this pathetic nonsense. Great! No problem, Thomas. Honestly, after dealing with his moping and moods, what I most felt was Good. Go.

  The phone call from my mother had actually been a kindness from the fates; I was sure. It wasn’t an irritating interruption after all but an offering, an outreached hand. I was a woman who believed in fate. Maybe I even believed that the timing of that call was a reward—finally!—for my own goodness. I looked down at that horrible card and truly believed that something was being made easy for me. Likely it was just another hapless move by our old pal coincidence, but there you had it.

  The energy turned into a swift plan. No, a plan sounded graphed and numbered. This was more a swarming mass that spoke one word: out.

  It was Thomas and Mary Evans at Eastside P, but not just Thomas and Mary Evans at Eastside P. It was the dog dying, the daughters growing up, the unchanged mother, the floors of the house beginning to slope. It was Thomas’s back, and a bad perm from a lifetime ago, and adventures in Costa Rica, and the failed idea that I might find happiness once everything finally got crossed off the list, only now that the list was mostly crossed off, what I was most was crushingly lonely.

  I knew there were road maps in the den. Yes, we had a den! I know! Who has a den? Dens were in the television shows of my childhood, the territory of Darrin Stephens and Mike Brady. Forgive me, but it also had paneling. I liked the paneling! It was reassuring! The maps were in a box up in the closet. Who has maps anymore, either, but I wanted one. A real foldout map, with roads and possibilities you could follow with one finger.