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car won’t start and I have a dentist appointment.” Pause. I can hear her swearing softly. “Clay.” Another pause, and then a decision: the doorknob turns. “I’m coming in, okay?”
    Oh, God. Paralyzed, clutching sheets to my naked chest. I want to shake snoring Clay awake but I can’t move as the door swings open, followed by a door-frame-shaped blast of sunlight and Woman.
    We’re both perfectly still as we stare at each other. She’s so backlit, I can barely make out her features. I can tell only that she’s petite, dark-haired, tightly wound, the type I’d cast as Hedda Gabler: intense, compact, ready for a fight. This is all the data I’m able to gather, blinking into the sunlight, before a whispered “shit” escapes her lips and she backs out the door, slamming it behind her. I hear her footsteps rapidly retreating.
    Wanton Tart and Cat Shot by Furious Gabler. Man Says Both Just Friends.
    I fall back against my pillow (not my pillow—my pillow is cremated) and close my eyes for a couple of seconds, willing the previous scene to rewind and erase. No use. Instead the scene is in a perpetual loop, playing over and over across my closed lids.
    â€œClay?”
    More snores.
    â€œHey. Clay?” I’m getting louder, now, shaking him gently but firmly.
    â€œDad?” he asks, his eyes popping open in alarm. Again, that bizarre, maternal urge stirs in me—some eerie, foreign desire to say “Shh, it’s okay” and kiss him back to sleep. I make a conscious effort to strangle this urge. There will be no shushing or kisses this morning.
    All the same, I can’t keep a tiny bit of warmth from my voice. “No, it’s me.”
    A little-boy smile takes over his face. “Oh. Ms. Claudia, I presume?” He wraps his arms around me, pulling me down against his chest, and for a second or two I’m so intoxicated by the hot-skin smell of this embrace I nearly forget that his better half is currently rifling through her sock drawer for a .38 special. Resist, Claudia. Resist.
    â€œListen,” I say, extricating myself from his arms. “There’s been a little incident this morning.”
    â€œDid we wet the bed?”
    â€œNot that kind of incident. An angry-woman-bursts-into-room sort of incident.”
    He looks stunned. “Shit. Really?”
    â€œWould I make this up?”
    â€œHow do I know?” he counters. “I hardly know you.”
    â€œYes, well, ditto,” I say. “And obviously, there’s a few things I should have asked. Like, say, ‘Are you married?’” I’m sitting up now, hugging my knees.
    â€œClaudia,” he reaches out to touch my wild nest of hair. “Shit. I’m really sorry.” Not the oh-that-was-just-my-crazy-kid-sister explanation I was praying for.
    I stare at him incredulously. “So you are, then? Married, I mean?”
    â€œWell, divorced.” He pauses. “Practically.”
    â€œWhat does practically divorced mean?”
    â€œWe’re legally separated.”
    â€œIs she the Friend in the cottage?” He hesitates before nodding. “Jesus, Clay, you had like nine hours of candid conversation to come clean with me, at least let me know what I’m getting—”
    â€œYou never asked.”
    Indeed. What can I say? I never asked.

CHAPTER 8
    I t’s foggy and I’m shivering when Clay drops me and Medea at the Greyhound station downtown. His truck was warm and smelled like cocoa butter. I wanted nothing more than to curl up there before his heater and never leave, but my pride forced me to refuse his offers of a sweatshirt and breakfast. On the drive here, our conversation was limited but revealing.
    CLAY: I know this looks really bad.
    CLAUDIA: Uh-huh.
    CLAY: Really, really bad. I feel like such a shit.
    CLAUDIA: Okay…
    CLAY: Did you talk to her?
    CLAUDIA: Who?
    CLAY: Monica.
    CLAUDIA: No. It