Chapter 2

The December night that ended everything had nothing to do with the kitchen.

It was a Friday. Aaron and Vanessa had gone out to dinner with Vanessa's parents — Dolores and her husband, Victor — and Ruth had been alone in the house, which had become her favorite state of being. She had made herself a cup of tea, which she had to drink out of a chipped mug because Vanessa had replaced the good mugs with a set of white ones that were still in the box, because the blue ones had "gone bad" somehow, and she had settled into the corner chair to read.

She had not been able to concentrate. The house was full of other people's things. The closets she had emptied of her husband's suits to make room for Aaron's jackets and Vanessa's boots. The guest room that had become a home office, with an open laptop and a filing cabinet that Vanessa had bought new. The walls that were covered with Vanessa's framed prints, abstract shapes in muted colors that Ruth did not understand but had not objected to, because objecting to a framed print felt like objecting to a person.

At eleven, she had given up on reading and gone upstairs. She had brushed her teeth and changed into her nightgown. She had turned off the light and lain in the dark, listening to the house settle.

She had not been asleep. She was never asleep before midnight anymore. She had heard the front door open, heard the murmur of voices, heard Aaron and Vanessa coming up the stairs.

They had stopped on the landing. The landing was directly below her room, and the heat vent carried sound like a pipe.

"—realistic about what she's going to need," Vanessa was saying. Her voice was low, but the heat vent made it clear. "We can't keep waiting forever. We need to make a plan."

"We have a plan," Aaron said.

"We have a 'wait and see' plan. That's not a plan. My parents are asking questions. My sister is asking questions. I told her we'd be in the new place by spring."

"We will be," Aaron said.

"We will be if we stop throwing money away waiting for her to—" Vanessa stopped.

The silence lasted long enough for Ruth to count her heartbeats.