Prologue

When she had packed all the artifacts that made up their personal history into liquor store boxes, the house became a strictly feminine place. She stood with her hands on her hips, stoically accepting the absence of the tangle of fishing poles, the old dartboard from a pub, the silky patterned ties that sat on the base of one box like a mass of snakes.

True, without these things, the house looked more like something out of a home furniture magazine than a home, but that was to be expected. What's a home when there's no one to come back to, anyway?

Shaking her head, she continued to pack away the matching mugs hand-lettered with their names, and the video camera they'd bought for their last anniversary, and a framed sampler some relative had stitched to commemorate their wedding.

She thanked Mavis for the unseasonably warm day, in January no less. When it hit 50 degrees in the shallows of January, people came out of their houses and the more people venture outside, the more people there would be for the sale.

Setting down the boxes that she had packed under the elm tree in their – no, it's not theirs anymore – front yard, she neatly arranged the items on top of them. She emptied his bedroom drawers and organized the things she found in smaller cartons.

She went back into the house for a final quick check, since curious neighbors were already milling on the front lawn. The living room seemed empty now that his old leather wing chair was sitting outside along with his ancestral paraphernalia. Overall, the house looked much like her apartment had eight years ago, before she had met him.

There was only one thing left in the house that reminded her of him. It was the panel of stained glass, the one that he'd given her just a few months before. She stopped in her bedroom doorway, staring as the sun filtered through the glass and burned the colors and pattern onto the mattress.

She remembered the day he gave it to her clear as day. She'd held it up to the light, turning it back and forth, until his hands had come over hers, stilling. 'Be careful,' he had said. 'It's fragile. See the soft lead? It bends. It can break.'

She wondered why she had not perceived that conversation the same way she did now: as a shrill and distant warning.

Instead, she had smiled at him, smiled and said that she knew this; that of course, she understood.

Glancing around her, she took a quick calculation of what had sold, what still remained. The box in her lap held over seven hundred dollars at last count. The fishing tackle and his bamboo fly rod had been among the first things to go. All his suits were gone. The head nursery teacher had bought every last uniform, saying that the 4-year-olds loved to play policeman, and wouldn't this be a wonderful addition to the dress-up corner?

At ten past five, she sat down on her folding chair. She remembered reading once about tribal Indian societies centuries earlier, in which women had the power to divorce their husbands simply by stacking his shoes outside a tipi. She pressed her knees together and tried not to think about the sun that was blinding her eyes and giving her a migraine.

Her husband drove up at 6:52. 'Hi,' he said. 'I made good time.'

Ha, as if, he usually got off from work by 5.

She didn't say anything.

He looked at the overturned boxes, the pile of unsold underwear to the left of her feet, the box on her lap. 'Getting rid of stuff? It was a good day for a garage sale.'

She did not turn to face him as he gave her a strange look, wondering why she didn't give her usual cheery 'welcome home!', and walked into the house. She counted how many breaths it took before he thundered down the stairs and out the door, to stand in front of her. His tan face was red with anger and his usual, spiky pink locks (It looked more and more ridiculous how she could have found pink hair attractive eight years ago.) seemed to be aflame.

'I'm sorry,' she said coolly, coming to her feet. She gestured gracefully around the lawn – her heiress side resurfacing – while looking at her husband. (she nearly hissed the term in her mind)

'There's nothing left.'

Willing herself to walk away from the lawn and onto the street after those last words, she did not allow herself to look back.