Once I had tried to reciprocate, to scratch his back. The second my fingers went to lift his shirt, however, he got up and left the room. I never tried again.

A husband stroking his wife’s neck while they cuddled on the love seat, on the other hand… Welcome to our little slice of normalcy.

“Do you believe in heaven?” I asked him casually. We’d watched some Harrison Ford movie that night, where the vengeful ghost of the husband’s first wife had wreaked havoc on the household.

“Maybe.”

“I don’t.”

His fingers tugged gently on my earlobe, firm, erotic pressure. I nestled closer to him, trying not to startle him, but having a harder and harder time sitting still. Who knew ears could be such an erogenous zone? But mine were, mine were.

“Why not?” he asked me, fingers moving from my earlobe, down the side of my neck, then back up again. A husband touching his wife. A wife snuggling with her husband. Normal. All perfectly normal.

So normal that some nights when I woke up alone in my marriage bed, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces. Yet I got up the next morning and did it all over again. Sometimes, I even heard my mother’s voice in my mind, “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know…”

She was right, in the end. At the ripe old age of twenty-one, I was finally seeing all of life’s great truths: You can be in love and still feel incredibly lonely. You can have everything you ever wanted, only to realize that you wanted all the wrong things. You can have a husband as smart and sexy and compassionate as mine, and yet not really have him at all. And you can look at your own beautiful, precious daughter some days, and be genuinely jealous of how much he loves her, instead of you.

“Just don’t,” I said now. “Nobody wants to die, that’s all. So they make up pretty stories of an eternal afterlife, to take away the fear. If you think about it, however, it doesn’t make any sense. Without sadness, there can be no happiness, which means a state of eternal bliss really wouldn’t be that blissful. In fact, at a certain point, it would be mostly annoying. Nothing to strive for, nothing to look forward to, nothing to do.” I slid him a look. “You wouldn’t last a minute.”

He smiled, a lazy look on his dark features. He hadn’t shaved today. I liked the days he skipped the razor, his unkempt beard a nice compliment to his deep brown eyes and perpetually rumpled hair. I’d always appreciated the bad boy look.

I wished I could feel his beard, trace the line of his jaw until I could find his pulse point at the base of his throat. I wished I could know if his heart was beating as hard as mine.

“I saw a ghost once,” he said.

“You did? Where?” I didn’t believe him and he could tell.

He smiled again, unconcerned. “An old house near where I used to live. Everyone said it was haunted.”

“So you just stopped by to check it out? Test out your male prowess?”

“I was visiting the owner. Unfortunately, she had died the night before. I found her body on the sofa, with her brother sitting beside her, which was interesting since he had died fifty years earlier.”

I was still dubious. “What did you do?”

“I said thank you.”

“Why?”

“Because once upon a time, her brother saved my life.”

I scowled, agitated by the coyness of his reply, and worse, the ten thousand nerve endings he had now stroked to life.

“Is it always going to be like this between us?” I asked abruptly.

“Like what?” But his hand was retreating, his face shuttering up.

“Half answers. Semi-truths. I ask a simple question, you dole out one tidbit of information while hoarding the rest.”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Will it always be like this between us?”

“We’re married!” I said impatiently. “It’s been three years, for God’s sake. We should be able to trust each other. Tell each other our deepest darkest secrets, or at least the basics of where we come from. Isn’t marriage supposed to be a conversation that lasts a lifetime? Aren’t we supposed to take care of each other, trust one another to keep each other safe?”

“Says who?”

I startled, shook my head. “What do you mean, says who?”

“I mean, says who? Who makes up these rules, sets these expectations? A husband and wife should keep each other safe. A parent should take care of a child. A neighbor should look after a neighbor. Who sets these rules and what have they done for you lately?”

His voice was gentle, but I knew what he meant and the starkness of his words made me flinch

He said softly, “Tell me about your mother, Sandy.”

“Stop it.”

“You claim to want to know all my secrets, but you keep your own.”

“My mother died when I was fifteen. End of story.”

“Heart attack,” he stated, repeating my previous assertions.

“It happens.” I turned away.

After a moment, Jason’s fingertips brushed my cheek, whispering across my lowered eyelashes.

“It will always be like this between us,” he said quietly. “But it won’t be this way for Ree.”

“There are things you lose you can’t get back,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“Even if you want them. Even if you search and pray and start completely over. It doesn’t matter. There are things you lose you can’t get back again. Things that once you know, you can never unknow.”

“I understand.”

I got off the sofa. Agitated now. I swear I could smell roses and I hated that smell. Why wouldn’t it leave me alone? I had fled my parents’ house, I had fled my parents’ town. The damn roses ought to leave me alone.

“She was mentally ill,” I blurted out. “A raging alcoholic. She did… crazy, crazy things and we covered for her. That’s what my father and I did. We let her torture us every single day and we never said a word. Life in a small town, right? Gotta keep up appearances.”

“She beat you.”

I laughed but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “She fed me rat poison so she could watch the doctors pump my stomach. I was a tool for her. A beautiful little doll she could break every time she wanted attention.”

“Munchhausen.”

“Probably. I’ve never sought an expert opinion.”

“Why not?”

“She’s dead. What’s the point?”

He gave me a look, but I refused to take the bait.

“Your father?” he asked at last.

“Successful lawyer with a reputation to uphold. Can’t really be admitting that his wife bashes gin bottles over his head every other night. Wouldn’t be good for business.”

“He put up with it?”

“Isn’t that how these things work?”

“Sadly, yes. Tell me again, Sandy, how did she die?”

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