The night my husband was laughing softly across candlelight with another woman while a bottle of Pinot Noir breathed between them on a table he probably billed to a client, I was kneeling on the nursery floor, sorting baby socks by color as if order could protect me from chaos.
The room smelled like fresh paint and lavender detergent, and the walls carried the pale sage shade I had applied myself in slow, careful strokes during early autumn. I remembered standing on a small ladder with a roller in my hand while Everett Hayes leaned in the doorway, holding a mug of black coffee, telling me I should sit more often. He said it gently, but his tone had always carried instruction beneath concern.
By October, I was eight months pregnant and sleeping in fragments, moving through our large colonial house in Darien, Connecticut as if I carried not just a child but the full weight of a life I had once chosen willingly.