My eyes circled the room, went searching for a clock. Instead they found shelves of books on mental illness, emotional intelligence, mind games; graduate school diplomas.

Tell me, the shrink said, what’s been happening.

That was where the conversation began.

I shifted in the chair, adjusted my shirt.

I cleared my throat, fought for my voice.

Everything all right? the shrink asked, watching as I shifted in the chair, as if getting comfortable in my own skin.

I told her everything was all right. I wasn’t shy. I never am. I kicked my feet up on an ottoman, told the woman before me, I’ve been sleeping with a married man.

She was heavier set, one of those women who carry the weight in their face.

There was no change in expression other than a slight lift to the left eyebrow. Her brows were thick, heavy.

Her lips parted. Oh? she asked, showing no emotion at what I’d said. Tell me about him. How did you meet?

I told her everything there was to tell about Will. I smiled as I did, reliving each moment, one at a time. The day we met beneath the tracks. His hand on my wrist, saving my life. Coffee in the coffee shop. Us leaned up against a building, Will’s voice in my ear, his hand on my thigh.

But then my mood turned sour. I reached for a tissue, blotted my eyes. I went on, telling her how hard it was being that other woman. How lonely. How I didn’t have the promise of daily contact. No check-in phone calls, no late-night confessions as we drifted to sleep. There was no one to talk to about my feelings. Alone, I tried not to ruminate on it. But there are only so many times you can be called by another woman’s name and not get a complex.

She encouraged me to end the affair.

But he says he loves me, I told her.

A man who is willing to cheat on his wife, she said, will often make promises to you that he can’t keep. When he tells you he loves you, it’s a form of entrapment. Cheating spouses are masters at manipulation, she said. He may tell you things to keep you from ending the affair. He has both a wife and a lover on the side. He has no incentive to change.

It wasn’t her intent, but I found relief in that.

Will had no reason to leave me.

Will would never leave me.

SADIE

I lay there half-asleep, shaken from a dream. In the dream, I was lying in a bed that wasn’t mine, staring up at a ceiling that was also not mine. The ceiling above me was a trey ceiling with a fan that dropped from the center of it. The blades of the fan were shaped like palm leaves. I’d never seen it before. The bed sagged in the middle so that there was a trench my body slipped easily into, making it hard to move. I lay in the strange bed, trapped in the crevasse.

It happened so fast there wasn’t time to wonder where I was, to worry about it, only to realize that I was not in my own bed. I reached a hand across either side of it, feeling for Will. But the bed was empty other than me. My own body was cocooned in a blanket beneath the quilt and I lay there, watching the inert fan above me, illuminated only by a streak of moonlight that came through the window. It was hot in the bed. I wished that the fan would move, that it would send a rush of air to my body to cool me off.

And then suddenly I was no longer in the bed. I was standing beside it, watching myself sleep. The room around me became distorted. The colors began to fade. All at once, everything was monochrome. The walls of the room warped to odd shapes, trapezoids and parallelograms. It was no longer square.

I felt a headache coming on.

In my dream, I forced my eyes closed to stop the room from changing shapes.

When I opened them again, I was in my own bed with an image of Morgan Baines in my mind. I’d been dreaming about her. I can’t remember the details of it, but I know for certain that she was there.

Before he left the bedroom a while ago, Will kissed me. He offered to drive the boys to school so that I could sleep in. You had trouble sleeping last night, he said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. I didn’t have trouble sleeping per se, but my dreams were so vivid I must have tossed and turned in my sleep.

Will kissed me on the head. He wished me a good day and he left.

Downstairs now I hear the rustle of breakfast being served, of backpacks being packed. The front door opens and they’re gone. Only then do I sit upright in bed. As I do, I see my nightgown lying at the end of it, no longer on me.

I rise to my feet, the covers sliding from my body. I discover that I’m naked. The realization of it startles me. My hand goes inadvertently to my chest. I’m not averse to sleeping nude. It was the way Will and I often slept before the boys started toddling into our room when they were young. But it’s not something I’ve often done since. The idea of sleeping naked when there are kids in my home embarrasses me. What if Otto had seen me like this? Or worse yet, Imogen?

The thought of Imogen suddenly gives me pause, because I heard Will and the boys leave. But I never heard Imogen leave.

I tell myself that Will wouldn’t leave before she did. He would have made sure she was gone first, headed to school. Imogen doesn’t always make her comings and goings known, which tells me now that she’s not here, that she slipped out quietly long before Will and the boys did.

There’s dried sweat beneath my arms and between my legs, a result of the inequitable heat in the old home. I remember how hot I was in my dream. I must have whipped off the nightgown unconsciously.

I find clothes in the dresser drawer, running tights and a long-sleeved shirt that I slip on. As I do, another thought comes to me, about Imogen. What if, like me, Will only assumed she’d gone to school, because of her tendency to slip in and out unnoticed?

My fear of Imogen colors my judgment and I find myself wondering: Is she still home? Are Imogen and I the only ones here?

I cautiously leave the bedroom. Imogen’s door is closed, the padlock on the new locking mechanism securely fastened, which tells me she’s not there in her room. Because she couldn’t lock it if she was inside.