The Fortune's Rocks Quartet

by Anita Shreve

Genres: Sagas; Women's Fiction; Romance Anthologies & Collections

Synopsis

This magnificent novel transports readers to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results. The Fortune Rock's Quartet collects four of Anita Shreve's most beloved novels- Fortune's Rocks, The Pilot's Wife, Sea Glass, and Body Surfing -for the first time. The novels highlight Shreve's ability to illuminate women's lives across different eras and share a delightful detail: they are all set in the same coastal New England home, one that has inspired Shreve for over a decade. Any house with age to it can tell a million stories about the families who have lived there, and Shreve has been quoted as saying, ''You could base an entire life's work on the people who come in and out of a house.'' Fortune's Rocks depicts a spirited young woman at the turn of the 20th century who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man. In Sea Glass, a young couple's new marriage is rocked to the core by the 1929 stock market crash. The Pilot's Wife brings us to the present day, where Kathryn is unprepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has been killed in a plane crash. Sydney, the heroine of Body Surfing has already been once divorced and once widowed by the age of 29, and finds the fragile existence she has rebuilt for herself threatened when two brothers vie for her affections. "There's something addictive about Shreve's tales," according to USA Today, and this quality is on full display in the critically acclaimed novels of The Fortune Rock's Quartet. No one writes more compellingly than Anita Shreve about marriage, family, the depths of our strength and resolve, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

Release date: November 1, 2010

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 1200

Sample

 

 

 

Reading Group Guide

Fortune’s Rocks

 

A NOVEL BY

ANITA SHREVE

 

If Walls Could Talk…

Anita Shreve describes how she came to write Fortune’s Rocks

I live in an old house, built more than two centuries ago. Sometimes I walk around the house and think about the people who have gone before me: The baby who was born in the room just off the kitchen; the woman who cried from the inattention of her husband in the upstairs bedroom; the families who huddled around the massive kitchen hearth; the child who perished from diphtheria croup in the room that is now my son’s bedroom. It is a house riddled with history, a house full of stories.

So it was not surprising that when I saw a house I thought was exceptionally beautiful, I would begin to think about its history and would develop this history in the novel The Pilot’s Wife. The house I describe in that novel is one I have actually seen — on the coast of southern Maine, near the New Hampshire border. It is a graceful and beautiful “cottage,” with lovely floor-to-ceiling windows and a mansard roof. I took the house and its location and created a story within it—that of a woman who loses her husband in a horrific accident and then discovers that he may not have been who she thought he was. In many ways, the house is both shelter to Kathryn Lyons and testing ground for her strength and stamina.

But then, as The Pilot’s Wife was nearing the end, I began to think about the history of the house, about the other women who would have lived within its walls, about the people, young and old, who would have known love and passion and fear and great joy. And so I began to think about a fifteen-year-old young woman who has come to the fictional summer resort of Fortunes Rocks with her family in the summer of 1899. In my imagination, she is a girl just on the cusp of her womanhood, a girl who is educated beyond her years and privileged beyond the dreams of most. That she was not immune to disaster, despite these advantages, seemed appropriate and intriguing. Thus, Fortune’s Rocks was born.

That book is now finished, but I find that I am still reluctant to abandon that lovely house. Occasionally, I think about going still further back in time to when the house was a convent. What marvelous stories must be lurking there!

 

A Brief Interview with Anita Shreve

Q: What was your inspiration in writing Fortune’s Rocks?

My inspiration was the house that also appears in The Pilots Wife. A house that age has any number of stories to tell. Olympia’s and Kathryn’s are but two of many. I was also still deeply intrigued by nineteenth-century language. I’d experimented with it a bit in The Weight of Water, and was loath to let it go.

Q: Do you become attached to the characters you write about? Can you imagine revisiting any of them in future books — Kathryn, Olympia, Jean?

I am still deeply attached to Olympia and was sorry to say good-bye to her. I have never seriously thought about writing a sequel, however, and think it is probably a bad idea. The pleasure of writing is the pleasure of invention.

Q: What writers influence you?

I am influenced by many writers: Alice McDermott, Roddy Doyle, Ian McEwan, John Banville, Edith Wharton, Brian Moore, Shirley Hazzard… the list goes on and on.

Q: What books would you suggest to readers who particularly appreciated the time period of Fortune’s Rocks?

I don’t believe it’s the time period of a certain book that so deeply affects us, but rather the feel of it, its urgency. Given that criterion, I could suggest a thousand readings and yet none. It’s inevitably a disappointment to look for the qualities we so enjoyed in one book in another. That said, Edith Wharton.

 

Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anita Shreve is the author of several internationally praised and bestselling novels, among themBody Surfing; A Wedding in December; Light on Snow; All He Ever Wanted; Sea Glass; The Last Time They Met; Fortune‘s Rocks; The Pilot‘s Wife, which was a selection of Oprah‘s Book Club;The Weight of Water, which was a finalist for England‘s prestigious Orange Prize and for which the author received the New England Book Award and the PEN / L. L. Winship Award;Resistance; Where or When; Strange Fits of Passion;and Eden Close. She lives in Massachusetts.
For more information, visit www.AnitaShreve.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright

 

Sea Glass

“Sea Glass is hard to put down…. Shreve hooks the reader early with the intriguing situations and relationships she creates for her characters. Like the sea glass Honora collects, the novel becomes a compulsion.”

— Lisa Trow, San Antonio Express News

“Anita Shreve deftly weaves history and romance into a fluid, compelling tale…. She excels at providing lush imagery and the small details…. Those of us who are willing to be swept away by the romance and reality of Sea Glass will be enchanted.”

— Barbara Ellis, Denver Post

“It’s nearly impossible to go anywhere — el, plane, train, beach — without an Anita Shreve sighting. Book sighting, that is…. Shreve’s gripping and literate romances rank right up there as the books of choice among that desirable demographic — female readers…. Shreve’s novels, whether contemporary or historical, constantly embrace the arena of love and relationships, but she does not use these ageless scenarios frivolously. To present a credible world to her readers, plots and characters are created with precision and intricate detail.”

— Mary Houlihan, Chicago Sun-Times

“Shreve executes portraits of her characters as if she were a watercolor artist, giving them shape with just a few meaningful brush strokes as she introduces them…. Just as in a perfectly executed watercolor, Shreve’s Sea Glass will fulfill the reader’s need for beauty and goodness in a chaotic world. It is colorful storytelling at its best, satisfying and entertaining.”

— Jeanne Ray, Boston Herald

“The story involves first love, lost innocence, and drastic twists of fate. With considerable polish, Ms. Shreve arranges a disparate group of characters at the New England seaside in 1929 and then lets economic turmoil set them adrift…. She writes pleasingly enveloping stories with fluent ease.”

— Janet Maslin, New York Times

“An intriguing Faulkner-esque tapestry of voices…. Shreve expertly weaves character and plot: her characters carry the enduring resonance of a literary novel, and her plot charges forward with the speed of a good summer read…. Shreve’s language is fast, propelling us forward into an ever-intensifying web of complex human relations.”

— Jennie A. Camp, Rocky Mountain News

“Shreve does not use her characters frivolously. They reveal who they are through their actions, with the author — who writes with admirable economy — rarely having to point a finger or underline the obvious. The true power of Sea Glass comes from the appalling social conditions Shreve describes so vividly, the grim but heroic lives her characters live…. She makes it very easy to share both her outrage and her sadness about the fates of Honora, McDermott, and the rest.”

— David Willis McCullough, New York Times Book Review

“It’s a contemplative story of love, life, death, beauty, and hope, with characters as colorful and different as shards of sea glass…. Shreve is especially good at conveying the lust, tension, and tentativeness between Honora and McDermott…. Each word is carefully measured, and her descriptions — ‘Beyond the beach, the Atlantic lies as flat as a wrinkled sheet’ — are little bites to be savored.”

— Emiliana Sandoval, Detroit Free Press

“Sea Glass is a novel that manages, impressively, to stay absorbing…. Shreve is able to strike a balance between being a commercial writer and a literary one.”

— Carmela Ciuraru, Los Angeles Times

“Sea Glass unravels the lives of its vivid characters…. Shreve reveals a kaleidoscope of human emotions as her characters react to the tragedies of the era…. It’s poignant, with a special twist.”

— Denise Schulman, New York Post

“In addition to spinning one of her most absorbing narratives, Shreve rewards her readers with the third volume in a trilogy set in the large house on the New Hampshire coast that figures in The Pilot’s Wife and Fortune’s Rocks…. A touching story about loyalty and betrayal, responsibility and dishonor. This is one of Shreve’s best.”

— Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Shreve continues to stretch between romantic and historical fiction in a way that combines the best of both genres…. She is one of America’s most entertaining historical novelists because she’s more interested in telling us about individuals than the past. Sea Glass is steeped in the details of its time, but Shreve’s characters walk on their own feet rather than across historical footnotes.”

— Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor

“Shreve carefully orchestrates her plot, introducing the central characters one by one before events conspire to bring them together. Before long, the novel’s sepia tones begin to take color, like the bits of sea glass Honora collects on the beach and keeps for luck.”

— Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today

“A helluva read…. Shreve’s secret is that she simply has the Gift — the ability to hook you from the first page, draw you in and pull you along, though you may kick and scream, and not let go until the final word…. Shreve sets up believable tension between the characters…. She creates, in short, a beautiful bubble, envelops the reader, raising real literary expectations…. Be aware: Once you open Sea Glass, you’re going to have a hard time closing it.”

— Zofia Smardz, Washington Post Book World

 

 

 

 

Contents

Praise for Anita Shreve’s

Also by Anita Shreve

Copyright

Dedication

Honora

McDermott

Alphonse

Vivian

Alice Willard

McDermott

Honora

Vivian

Sexton

Vivian

Alphonse

Honora

Sexton

Honora

Vivian

McDermott

Alphonse

McDermott

Honora

Alice Willard

Sexton

Honora

Vivian

Honora

Alphonse

Honora

Vivian

McDermott

Alphonse

Honora

Alice Willard

Vivian

Sexton

McDermott

Alphonse

Honora

McDermott

Honora

Honora

McDermott

Alphonse

Vivian

Alice Willard

Honora

McDermott

Honora

Alphonse

Vivian

Honora

Sexton

McDermott

Alice Willard

Alphonse

McDermott

Honora

Sexton

Honora

McDermott

Honora

McDermott

Honora

Alphonse

Honora

Alice Willard

Alphonse

Honora

McDermott

Alphonse

Sexton

Vivian

Honora

Honora

Alphonse

Author’s Note

Reading Group Guide

Anita Shreve on the Origins of Sea Glass

Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A NOVEL BY

Anita Shreve

 

 

I first saw the house in Biddeford Pool, Maine, about five years ago. We were renting a sad and pathetic cottage there for our summer vacation, and one of my favorite pastimes was to walk through the village and look at the houses. One day I took a side street I hadn’t been down before, and at the end of it was one of the most beautiful houses I had ever seen. It was two stories high, white clapboard, and it had a mansard roof with dozens of dormer windows poking out of it. It was completely surrounded by a wraparound porch on which sat two wooden rockers looking out to sea. The house had a kind of graciousness and serenity that was exceptional, and I think it is fair to say that I fell in love with it. I wanted to live there.

Living in it was out of the question then, but that was all right, I thought — it was enough just to be able to look at it and fantasize about it. I’ve always been charmed by houses, and descriptions of them are prominent in my novels. So prominent, in fact, that my editor once pointed out to me that all of my early novels had houses on the covers.

A novel is a collision of ideas. Three or four threads may be floating around in the writer’s consciousness, and at a single moment in time, these ideas collide and produce a novel. Shortly after I had first seen the house, I overheard a conversation between a pilot and a woman at a party. Something he said lodged in my consciousness and wouldn’t go away. The thing he said was: “When there’s a crash, the union always gets there first.” He meant that when there was a crash of a commercial airliner, a member of the pilot’s union made it a point to get to the pilot’s wife’s house first. There are a lot of reasons for this, the most important of which is to keep her from talking to the press. And there was my collision of ideas. I decided to set the novel I was then beginning to write, The Pilot’s Wife, in the house I had seen in Biddeford Pool. At the very least, the novel gave me a wonderful excuse to think about the house for a year and get paid for it.

So strong was the house’s hold on me, however, that I was loath to let it go, even when I let go of the novel itself. I knew already I wanted to set my next novel in the nineteenth century because I had found writing in nineteenth-century language in The Weight of Water so pleasurable. At the same time, I was observing the process of having a daughter and two stepdaughters pass through that delicate age of fourteen to fifteen. Same house, I thought, but a hundred years earlier. Very different story, very different young woman.

A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house. Until recently, I lived in an old house of my own. It had sloping floors, no closets, no bathroom big enough in which to take an actual bath. Sometimes I felt awash in plastic toys, old newspapers, and milk cartons I thought I was recycling. But occasionally, when there was a fire in the large kitchen hearth and I was sitting beside it at the table, I imagined the people who had gone before me: the young woman who gave birth in the room just off the kitchen that was known as the borning room; the middle-aged woman who cried at the inattentions of her husband in the room that was our bedroom; the child who died of diphtheria in the room that belonged to my son. Sometimes I would have to force myself to realize that they, too, lived their lives in Technicolor, that their experience of life was just as vivid and as immediate as mine. In that house there was a great deal of history — the history of accounts rendered, dresses falling, bitter accusations, and words of love. It was a house full of stories.

Last year, when I was on tour for the paperback edition of Fortune’s Rocks, I was giving a reading at a bookstore in Nashville. A woman in the audience raised her hand and asked: “Why did you set both novels in the same house?” I answered that I had been thinking about the fact that an old house might have many stories to tell. Ten or eleven women, each with her own life, her own story, could be imagined to have lived in the house that was featured in The Pilot’s Wife and Fortune’s Rocks. For example, I said, you could write, say, a story about a woman who lived there during World War II, or during the Great Depression.

If I didn’t actually pause in my answer, there was a heart-stopping pause in my head. There’s an idea, I thought. Same house, absolutely derelict this time, very different kind of woman trying to make a go of it during a difficult era in our nation’s history. I have no memory of the rest of the Q and A, or the signing, but I do remember moving immediately to the history section of the bookstore and searching for a book on the Great Depression. My escort found me and said, “You know, they want to give you a book for doing the reading.” “Wonderful,” I said. “I want this one.” She glanced down at the book and narrowed her eyes at what looked to be a very dry history text. “Are you sure?” she asked. “I’m very sure,” I said.

The novel that resulted is Sea Glass. I often think that sea glass itself is not unlike old houses in that it, too, suggests stories of previous lives. Sea glass is essentially trash — bits of glass from ships that have gone down or garbage that has been tossed overboard. The glass breaks and then is weathered by the sea and washes up onto shore. The shards take on a lovely patina and come in many subdued colors. Sea glass will not break. I have spent many hours on the beach collecting sea glass, and I almost always wonder, as I bend to pick up a chunk of bottle green or a shard of meringue white, what the history of the glass is. Who used it? Was it a medicine bottle? A bit of a ship’s lantern? Is that bubbled piece of glass with the charred bits inside it from a fire?

The pull of history has been a strong theme in my life as a novelist. I don’t know that I will write any more novels set in that particular house on Fortune’s Rocks beach, because I have to wait for that collision of ideas. But I suspect the house has many stories left to tell. I know that dwelling very well now. I feel an odd sort of bond with it, a unique kind of loyalty.

Consider Honora and Sexton’s relatively brief courtship. Why did they fall in love with each other — or did they even fall in love at all? Do you think they hurried into marriage?

The story in Sea Glass is told from the perspective of several different characters. Did you find yourself empathizing with one character more than the others? If so, which character and why?

The house into which Honora and Sexton move as the novel opens — a house that seems, by anyone’s standards, too large for just two people — functions almost as a character in its own right in Sea Glass. Discuss the various roles the house plays in the story — the importance of its size, its location, etc. If you’ve also read The Pilot’s Wife or Fortune’s Rocks, did you recognize the house from those novels?

Discuss the relationship that develops between Alphonse and McDermott. In what ways is their friendship important to each of them?

Everyone keeps secrets. Most husbands and wives keep secrets from each other. Do you blame Sexton for his deviousness in securing a down payment for the house? Do you blame him for his failure to be entirely honest with Honora? Were his actions innocent? Criminal? Somewhere in between?

To what extent does it matter that the novel is set at the dawn of the Great Depression? Imagine a similar story unfolding today. In what significant ways might the characters’ lives be different?

What are Vivian’s motives for supporting the striking mill workers? In view of her temperament and her wealth, are her motives plausible?

At what point in the novel does Honora fall in love with McDermott? At what point does she realize that she’s in love with him?

In reviewing Sea Glass, many literary critics remarked on the appropriateness of the novel’s title. What do the words sea glass connote in your mind? In what ways does the phrase function metaphorically as a description of the novel?

Allow yourself to play novelist for a moment and imagine Honora’s life in the years beyond the events of the novel. What does the future hold for Honora? How would you want her life to unfold? Chart the future lives of the novel’s other major characters as well.

SHE HEARD A KNOCKING, AND THEN A DOG BARKING. Her dream left her, skittering behind a closing door. It had been a good dream, warm and close, and she minded. She fought the waking. It was dark in the small bedroom, with no light yet behind the shades. She reached for the lamp, fumbled her way up the brass, and she was thinking, What? What?

The lit room alarmed her, the wrongness of it, like an emergency room at midnight. She thought, in quick succession: Mattie. Then, Jack. Then, Neighbor. Then, Car accident. But Mattie was in bed, wasn’t she? Kathryn had seen her to bed, had watched her walk down the hall and through a door, the door shutting with a firmness that was just short of a slam, enough to make a statement but not provoke a reprimand. And Jack — where was Jack? She scratched the sides of her head, raking out her sleep-flattened hair. Jack was — where? She tried to remember the schedule: London. Due home around lunchtime. She was certain. Or did she have it wrong and had he forgotten his keys again?

She sat up and put her feet on the freezing floorboards. She had never understood why the wood of an old house lost its warmth so completely in the winter. Her black leggings had ridden up to the middle of her calves, and the cuffs of the shirt she had slept in, a worn white shirt of Jack’s, had unrolled and were hanging past the tips of her fingers. She couldn’t hear the knocking anymore, and she thought for a few seconds that she had imagined it. Had dreamed it, in the way she sometimes had dreams from which she woke into other dreams. She reached for the small clock on her bedside table and looked at it: 3:24. She peered more closely at the black face with the glow-in-the-dark dial and then set the clock down on the marble top of the table so hard that the case popped open and a battery rolled under the bed.

But Jack was in London, she told herself again. And Mattie was in bed.

There was another knock then, three sharp raps on glass. A small stoppage in her chest traveled down into her stomach and lay there. In the distance, the dog started up again with short, brittle yips.

She took careful steps across the floor, as if moving too fast might set something in motion that hadn’t yet begun. She opened the latch of the bedroom door with a soft click and made her way down the back staircase. She was thinking that her daughter was upstairs and that she should be careful.

She walked through the kitchen and tried to see, through the window over the sink, into the driveway that wound around to the back of the house. She could just make out the shape of an ordinary dark car. She turned the corner into the narrow back hallway, where the tiles were worse than the floorboards, ice on the soles of her feet. She flipped on the back-door light and saw, beyond the small panes set into the top of the door, a man.

He tried not to look surprised by the sudden light. He moved his head slowly to the side, not staring into the glass, as if it were not a polite thing to do, as if he had all the time in the world, as if it were not 3:24 in the morning. He looked pale in the glare of the light. He had hooded eyelids and a widow’s peak, hair the color of dust that had been cut short and brushed back at the sides. His topcoat collar was turned up, and his shoulders were hunched. He moved once quickly on the doorstep, stamping his feet. She made a judgment then. The long face, slightly sad; decent clothes; an interesting mouth, the bottom lip slightly curved and fuller than the upper lip: not dangerous. As she reached for the knob, she thought, Not a burglar, not a rapist. Definitely not a rapist. She opened the door.

“Mrs. Lyons?” he asked.

And then she knew.

It was in the way he said her name, the fact that he knew her name at all. It was in his eyes, a wary flicker. The quick breath he took.

She snapped away from him and bent over at the waist. She put a hand to her chest.

He reached his hand through the doorway and touched her at the small of her back.

The touch made her flinch. She tried to straighten up but couldn’t.

“When?” she asked.

He took a step into her house and closed the door. “Earlier this morning,” he said.

“Where?”

“About ten miles off the coast of Ireland.”

“In the water?”

“No. In the air.”

“Oh. . . .” She brought a hand to her mouth.

“It almost certainly was an explosion,” he said quickly. “You’re sure it was Jack?”

He glanced away and then back again.

“Yes.”

He caught her elbows as she went down. She was momentarily embarrassed, but she couldn’t help it, her legs were gone. She hadn’t known that her body could abandon her so, could just give out like that. He held her elbows, but she wanted her arms back. Gently, he lowered her to the floor.

She bent her face to her knees and wrapped her arms over her head. Inside her there was a white noise, and she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Consciously, she tried to breathe, to fill up her lungs. She raised her head up and took in great gulps of air. As if in the distance, she heard an odd choking sound that wasn’t exactly crying because her face was dry. From behind her, the man was trying to lift her up.

“Let me get you to a chair,” he said.

She swung her head from side to side. She wanted him to let her go. She wanted to sink into the tiles, to ooze onto the floor.

Awkwardly, he placed his arms under hers. She let him help her up.

“I’m going to be —,” she said.

Quickly, she pushed him away with the palms of her hands and leaned against the wall for support. She coughed and gagged, but there was nothing in her stomach.

When she looked up, she could see that he was apprehensive. He took her by the arm and made her round the corner into the kitchen.

“Sit here in this chair,” he said. “Where’s the light?”

“On the wall.”

Her voice was raspy and faint. She realized she was shivering.

He swiped for the switch and found it. She put a hand up in front of her face to ward off the light. Instinctively, she did not want to be seen.

“Where do you keep the glasses?” he asked.

She pointed to a cabinet. He poured her a glass of water and handed it to her, but she couldn’t hold it steady. He braced her fingers while she took a sip.

“You’re in shock,” he said. “Where can I get you a blanket?” “You’re with the airline,” she said.

He took off his topcoat and his jacket and put the jacket around her shoulders. He made her slide her arms into the sleeves, which were surprisingly silky and warm.

“No,” he said. “The union.”

She nodded slowly, trying to make sense of this.

“Robert Hart,” he said, introducing himself.

She nodded again, took another sip of water. Her throat felt dry and sore.

“I’m here to help,” he said. “This is going to be difficult to get through. Is your daughter here?”

“You know I have a daughter?” she asked quickly.

And then she thought, Of course you do.

“Would you like me to tell her?” he asked.

Kathryn shook her head.

“They always said the union would get here first,” she said. “The wives, I mean. Do I have to wake her now?”

He glanced quickly at his watch, then at Kathryn, as if considering how much time was left to them.

“In a few minutes,” he said. “When you’re ready. Take your time.”

The telephone rang, a serrated edge in the silence of the kitchen. Robert Hart answered it immediately.

“No comment,” he said.

“No comment.

“No comment.

“No comment.”

She watched him lay the receiver back on its cradle and massage his forehead with his fingers. He had thick fingers and large hands, hands that seemed too big for his body.

She looked at the man’s shirt, a white oxford with a gray stripe, but all she could see was a fake plane in a fake sky blowing itself to bits in the distance.

She wanted the man from the union to turn around and tell her that he had made a mistake: He’d gotten the plane wrong; she was the wrong wife; it hadn’t happened the way he said it had. She could almost feel the joy of that.

“Is there someone you want me to call?” he asked. “To be with you.”

“No,” she said. “Yes.” She paused. “No.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t ready yet. She lowered her eyes and fixed them on the cabinet under the sink. What was in it? Cascade. Drano. Pine Sol. Jack’s black shoe polish. She bit the inside of her cheek and looked around at the kitchen, at the cracked pine table, the stained hearth behind it, the milk-green Hoosier cabinet. Her husband had shined his shoes in this room not two days ago, his foot braced on a bread drawer he had pulled out for the task. It was often the last thing he did before he left for work. She would sit and watch him from the chair, and lately it had become a kind of ritual, a part of his leaving her.

It had always been hard for her, his leaving the house — no matter how much work she had to do, no matter how much she looked forward to having time to herself. And it wasn’t that she had been afraid. She hadn’t been in the habit of being fearful. Safer than driving a car, he’d always said, and he’d had an offhand confidence, as though his safety were not even worthy of a conversation. No, it wasn’t exactly safety. It was the act of leaving itself, of Jack’s removing himself from the house, that had always been difficult. She often felt, watching him walk out of the door with his thick, boxy f