Grateful, grateful, grateful.

The vacuum cleaner started again upstairs.

Perry had never, in all their years together, made a comment on how she chose to spend their (his) money, except to remind her occasionally, mildly, humorously, that she could spend more if she liked. “You know we can afford to get you a new one,” he’d said once when he came upon her in the laundry, scrubbing furiously at a stain on the collar of a silk shirt.

“I like this one,” she’d said.

(The stain was blood.)

Once she stopped working, her relationship to money had changed. She used it the same way she’d use someone else’s bathroom: carefully and politely. She knew that in the eyes of the law and society (supposedly) she was contributing to their lives by running the house and bringing up the boys, but she still never spent Perry’s money in the same way she’d once spent her own.

She’d certainly never spent twenty-five thousand dollars in one afternoon. Would he comment? Would he be angry? Was that why she’d done it? Sometimes, on the days when she could feel his rage simmering, when she knew it was only a matter of time, when she could smell it in the air, she’d deliberately provoke him. She’d make it happen, so it was done.

Even when she was giving to charity, was it really just another step in the sick dance of their marriage?

It wasn’t like it was unprecedented. They went to charity balls and Perry would bid twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars with the unsmiling nod of a head. But that wasn’t about giving, so much as winning. “I’ll never be outbid,” he told her once.

He was generous with his money. If he ever discovered that a family member or friend was in need, he discreetly wrote a check or did a direct transfer, waving away thanks, changing the subject, seemingly embarrassed by the ease with which he could solve someone else’s financial crisis.

The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it.

“Mrs. White?” A stocky, bearded man handed her a giant bouquet of flowers.

“Thank you,” said Celeste.

“Someone is a lucky lady!” said the man, as if he’d never seen a woman receive such an impressive arrangement.

“I sure am!”

The sweet heavy scent tickled her nose. Once, she’d loved to receive flowers. Now it was like being handed a series of tasks: Find the vase. Cut the stems. Arrange them like so.

Ungrateful bitch.

She read the tiny card.

I love you. I’m sorry. Perry.

Written in the florist’s handwriting. It was always so strange to see Perry’s words transcribed by someone else. Did the florist wonder what Perry had done? What husbandly transgression he had committed last night? Coming home late?

She carried the flowers toward the kitchen. The bouquet was shaking, she noticed, shivering as if it were cold. She tightened her grip on the stems. She could throw them against the wall, but it would be so unsatisfying. They would flop ineffectually to the ground. There would be drifts of sodden petals across the carpet. She’d have to scrabble around on the floor for them before the cleaners came downstairs.

For God’s sake, Celeste. You know what you have to do.

She rememebered the year she turned twenty-five: the year she appeared in court for the first time, the year she bought her first car and invested in the stock market for the first time, the year she played competitive squash every Saturday. She had great triceps and a loud laugh.

That was the year she met Perry.

Motherhood and marriage had made her a soft, spongy version of the girl she used to be.

She laid the flowers down carefully on the dining room table and went back to her laptop.

She typed the words “marriage counselor” into Google.

Then she stopped. Backspace, backspace, backspace. No. Been there, done that. This wasn’t about housework and hurt feelings. She needed to talk to someone who knew that people behaved like this; someone who would ask the right questions.

She could feel her cheeks burn as she typed in the two shameful words.

“Domestic.” “Violence.”

28.

There are harder things than this, thought Madeline as she folded a pair of white skinny jeans and added them to the half-packed open suitcase on Abigail’s bed.

Madeline had no right to the feelings she was experiencing. Their magnitude embarrassed her. They were wildly disproportionate to the situation at hand.

So, Abigail wanted to live with her father and she wasn’t being all that nice about it. But she was fourteen. Fourteen-year-olds were not known for their empathy.

Madeline kept thinking she was fine about it. She was over it. No big deal. She was busy. Other things to do. And then it would hit her again, like a blow to the abdomen. She’d find herself taking short shallow breaths as if she were in labor. (Twenty-seven hours with Abigail. Nathan and the midwife joked about football while Madeline died. Well, she didn’t die, but she remembered thinking that this sort of pain could only end in death, and the last words she’d hear would be about Manly’s chances of winning the premiership.)

She lifted one of Abigail’s tops from the laundry basket. It was a pale peachy color, and it didn’t suit Abigail’s coloring, but she loved it. It was hand-wash only. Bonnie could do that now. Or maybe the new upgraded version of Nathan did laundry now. Nathan Version 2.0. Stays with his wife. Volunteers at homeless shelters. Hand-washes.

He was coming over later today with his brother’s truck to pick up Abigail’s bed.

Last night Abigail had asked Madeline if she could please take her bed to Nathan’s house. It was a beautiful four-poster canopy bed that Madeline and Ed had given Abigail for her fourteenth birthday. It had been worth every exorbitant cent to see the ecstasy on Abigail’s face when she first saw it. She’d actually danced with joy. It was like remembering another person.