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Kathy do that?” he said, referring to our bimonthly cleaning lady.
    I dunked the mop in the bucket and then squeezed out the excess water. “I let her go,” I said. I felt horrible about it because she was a single parent and really needed the money. “I told her I’d call her back when our budget eases up a little.”
    Chris wouldn’t look at me, or maybe I was the one who avoided his eyes, afraid to see any kind of hurt in them. “Our budget is fine,” Chris said softly. He skipped dinner that night and spent the evening in our home office with the door closed.
    I took on additional clients, and I hustled for more, following up on every lead I encountered. Sometimes I worked until midnight but even then Chris would stay up later, and it was around this time that he stopped coming to bed altogether, preferring the couch so he wouldn’t disrupt my sleep with his restlessness. I slept worse without him next to me, but I refrained from complaining so I wouldn’t add to his stress.
    One night in August, after I tucked the kids into bed, I found Chris in the office with a calculator and the checkbook on the desktop in front of him, fingers flying over the numbers, his brow furrowed.
    “We’ll be dipping into our savings by winter,” Chris said, shaking his head. He exhaled and massaged his temples.
    The money he had received in one lump sum equaled eight months of his base salary but didn’t include the commissions he once earned. Though we didn’t have any revolving debt we paid a small fortune to our mortgage company every month. The irony was that the home Chris and I were once so proud of had lost a significant amount of its value when property values plummeted; we probably couldn’t unload it if we wanted to, and we would lose money even if we found a buyer.
    “I’m taking on more work than ever,” I said. “If you weren’t here to help me with the kids, I’d never have had the ability to bid for these jobs, and there’s no way I would have had the time to devote to them.”
    “Well, that makes me feel so much better,” he said, sighing, not bothering to hide the defeat in his voice.
    I’d always thought we were equal partners, but my normally open-minded husband apparently harbored some fairly strong 1950s opinions about who should be bringing home the bacon and who should fry it up in the pan. Or maybe it was just his wounded ego that was feeling old-fashioned.
    I left the room, trying my best not to crush the eggshells under my feet.



8
    daniel
    Dylan’s in town. He sends me a text and asks me to meet him for a drink, so when my shift ends I go home and change out of my uniform. When I walk into the bar he’s sitting on a stool, whiskey in hand, shooting the shit with the bartender. I can’t even imagine what he’s saying; the possibilities are endless.
    “Hey,” I say when I slide onto the stool next to him. “When did you get into town?” I signal the bartender to bring me the same thing Dylan is drinking.
    “Couple hours ago,” he says. He takes a drink of his whiskey. “You shoot anybody today?” It’s an old, worn-out joke. One Dylan never tires of. His jab at my profession. Ironic, considering he refuses to choose one of his own.
    I let it go. “Nope.” The bartender sets down my drink. “How long are you sticking around?”
    “Not long. I’m just passing through.”
    He needs a haircut and his wrinkled clothes tell me he’s probably crashing on someone’s couch and living out of a duffel bag. I take too big a drink and the whiskey burns a bit on its way down. “You see Mom and Dad yet?”
    “I told you I just got here.”
    “You should have gone there first.” I don’t know why I think that’s even a possibility. Dylan goes where he wants to. “They miss you.”
    “What do you hear from Jessie these days?” he asks.
    “I don’t.” It’s just like Dylan to mention the one thing he knows I don’t want to talk about. The thing I’ve failed at. I take