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quiet, time to heal, and an opportunity to rebuild the tattered remains of her confidence. She didn’t think that going after someone so soon after the end of her marriage was a good idea—it was likely to only end in heartache. “I’ll start looking for a new man once I’ve totally exorcised the remains of my old man from my brain,” Regina had told her sister when Abigail pressed her to try a dating service, or to simply go out on a Friday night for drinks.
    Regina spent her Sunday getting ready for the week to come, comforted by the familiar routine. Her home was echoingly empty at times, but it was easy for Regina to put some music on and fill the space with sound. She went to the grocery store, and picked up her dry cleaning, and in her mind she rehearsed how she was going to deal with Bradley in the following weeks. She did her laundry, muttering to herself as she played through scenarios in her mind.
    “Bradley,” she said, glancing at herself in the mirror for confidence. “I know you’re bullying me because you don’t think I deserve this position, and you think you know everything about the job. I’m not an easy target—and I’m going to insist that you cut that shit out, because it’s not getting anything accomplished.” Regina didn’t know if she would actually have the guts to say something so direct to her coworker, but she knew she had to try to be as explicit as possible in her dealings with him. She wondered what would happen if Bradley decided to go to Talitha with some complaint about her work. From years of working with the company, Regina knew that Bradley had a certain amount of clout with the higher-ups. He could, conceivably, go over even Talitha’s head.
    Regina reminded herself that she was doing very good work; Talitha wouldn’t have put her on the big project if she didn’t have confidence in Regina’s ability to pull it off. Regina also knew that she tended to underestimate her own abilities, a lingering effect of her husband’s constant shouting and the bruises he’d left on her body. There was just so much that she had to do to get back to normal.
    At times, Regina wondered if she would ever be her “old self.” It was frustrating for her to know that she had allowed another person to change her so much. The woman who had entered into the relationship with her ex-husband had been confident, assertive, on fire with determination to be the best and to achieve. Her husband hadn’t been abusive to her at first; it had started slowly, as Regina knew it tended to. He started by being jealous of her time, insisting that she should come home from work exactly at the end of the day, instead of staying late to get ahead. He made his displeasure known if Regina ever even glanced at another man, telling her that it was disrespectful to him—and what did she think she was going to do with the other man anyway?
    Gradually, the tension had mounted. Richard had made more and more demands on Regina; ordering her time on the weekends, insisting on her getting chores done in a certain way, in a certain order.
    The first time that he hit her, Regina had been shocked and appalled. She had called the police, fired up with indignation; Richard had spent the night in jail before bailing himself out and then coming to their home with an armful of roses. After every major upheaval, every big fight—just when Regina was certain she couldn’t tolerate any more—Richard always had a gift for her and an apology for his behavior that he tinged with the suggestion that if she had been better behaved, it never would have happened.
    Regina fell into bed on Sunday night, remembering the lessons she had learned from her ex-husband: she had to stand up for herself, had to believe in the fact that she had earned her position, that she had the skills and expertise and intelligence to do her job. She wondered how quickly she could get around to confronting Bradley and asserting herself.

Tension and