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pacing to the house. She went up and down stairs. She circled from the foyer to the kitchen, through the sunporch to the dining room and library. She climbed all three flights of stairs, avoiding the basement but pacing the rough, unfinished floor of the attic, feet tapping a rhythmic heel-toe, heel-toe. She slept little, pacing the house at night until the nanny complained that she thought the old place might be haunted, because she could hear someone walking above her ceiling.
    The next day, when the nanny took the children to their lessons, Lilly’s feet took her outside, through the labyrinth of Marblehead streets, past the fading window boxes where the vinca and blue scaevola struggled against the August drought. On the day when the drought finally broke, she ducked into the Spirit of ’76 Bookstore to get out of the rain, but the place was too quiet for her and she imagined that everyone could hear the squishing sound her sneakers made as she walked on the carpet, so she went back outside. But it was pouring, thundering and very windy. She stood under the awning and watched as a black plastic garbage can caught wind and rolled down the two-lane street, hitting a standing group of planters like a bowling ball, leaving a seven-ten split. She stayed under the awning until she noticed people looking at her, and then she crossed the street and entered the Rip Tide, someplace she’d never been to in her life.
    It was three-thirty. The construction workers who weren’t already finished for the day were finally called off the job because of the rain, and the bar was filling up. Lilly walked to the far end and took one of the high stools, one she could wind her feet around to still their movement.
    â€œWhat can I get you?” the bartender asked.
    Lilly didn’t drink. She had no idea.
    â€œDo you have any kind of food?” she asked the man. She was aware that she was the only woman in the place. She could feel all eyes on her.
    â€œThey have great steak tips,” a man two stools down offered.
    â€œLunch is over. The kitchen doesn’t open until five,” the bartender said.
    â€œOh, come on, the lady looks like she could use a good steak.”
    She knew they were looking at her, but she had no idea how she must appear. Wet-T-shirt contest was the first thing she thought, but she was too skinny for wet tees to matter much. Her collarbones felt sharp and jutting.
    The bartender muttered and went to the back to cook. “You owe me one,” he said, not to Lilly but to the man who’d procured the steak tips for her.
    The man dragged his bar stool over to hers.
    His name was Adam, he told her. He lived above one of the shops on Pleasant Street, just a few houses down on the left. He did finish carpentry for a local contractor, the same one her husband had recently hired to do some work on their house.
    Lilly ate the steak tips. She ate the salad that came with them, too. She even ate the garnish, something pickled and sour, though she couldn’t name what it was.
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    S HE HAD GONE TO HIS house, she later told Zee, because he’d offered her a dry T-shirt and a ride home.
    They’d done it that first afternoon, she said, not in the bedroom but right there on the green couch in the corner, the wind whipping the aluminum sign against the side of the building, hailstones the size of golf balls crashing hard against the windows, denting the cars in the bank parking lot across the street.
    â€œI felt safe for the first time in years,” Lilly told Zee.
    Zee thought Lilly’s description sounded anything but safe, yet she knew it was an important statement. “What about it made you feel safe?”
    â€œThe couch, for one thing. It was this deep-cushioned thing, kind of a dark green velvet. Like a forest or something.”
    â€œForest green?”
    â€œYes, and the light from the window.”
    â€œYou said it was stormy.”
    â€œIt was. Maybe it