Rachel stood in front of the girls’ shared closet in their shared room. Dresses and skirts were crammed tightly together, packed in so close that to dislodge one item meant several others pulled off their hangers in unison. Piles of clothes were on the floor, too, tangled with shoes and an extra blanket that had fallen off a shelf. Tank tops, bathing suits, and summer dresses were still here, in October, forgotten and flimsy-looking, but Rachel had no energy to weed them out and pack a box for storage. Nor had she any space for storage in this two-bedroom apartment. There was a single crawl space under the stairs, but it was stuffed to bursting with brooms and buckets, two extra dining chairs, and too many unmarked boxes of—what? Books, probably, or pots and pans. Parts of their old life: haphazardly packed up, tucked into corners, and pretty much ignored. Rachel tugged halfheartedly at a few items of Lila’s, hoping for inspiration—these flared jeans, for bell-bottoms? But then Melissa might insist on some kind of belly-baring “hippie” top. No way. A pink-and-white turtleneck…what about a candy cane? Cute, but in a kind of ironic way. Was that even a possibility?

“You wish,” she told herself. Last spring a girl in Melissa’s class was suspended for wearing a skintight camouflauge T-shirt THAT READ MAJOR FLIRT REPORTING FOR DUTY. AT YOUR SERVICE, SIR!

It had come as a surprise this morning, when Melissa asked about a costume. They were having cereal.

“Seriously?” Rachel had said. “Kids are still dressing up? In the seventh grade?”

“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “Not, like, officially or anything. Not for class.”

“It’s just that it’s kind of late in the game, sweetie. Today’s Thursday.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Mom,” Lila said, and it had brought Rachel up short, her older daughter’s tone half question, half warning. So much had changed for them. Rachel herself had changed, so much, since the accident, since the move.

The problem was, she used to love Halloween.

There had been the Mother Goose year, when Lila was Little Miss Muffet (in lace-trimmed pantaloons, carrying a stuffed spider and a paper cup of sludgy white paste marked curds and whey), and Melissa portrayed Hey Diddle Diddle in a furry gray-and-white cat suit that had taken Rachel three weeks to make, with mascara whiskers drawn on her tiny face. She’d carried Lila’s school violin for a fiddle—or Bob had, anyway, during trick-or-treating, to prevent its being dropped or dented or altogether forgotten in the heady rush for doorbells and candy. Then, when Lila was about ten and Melissa seven or so, Rachel had made them both into birds, using the same sheer black fabric with flecks of shimmery green, and each girl had long, swooping wings they delighted in all night, and wild feathered headpieces, and curved plastic beaks stapled to elastic bands that itched and chafed and were promptly discarded. In the photos, taken each Halloween on the front steps, you couldn’t tell at all that they were meant to be birds (without the beaks, they looked more like 1920s-era flappers), but they were ebullient, barely contained, standing side by side: Melissa’s round little tummy, Lila’s bare ankles.

Now Rachel stood in the girls’ room—smaller than either of their own rooms had been in the real house—and tried to summon that old energy, that once-powerful interest in batting, industrial adhesive, cardboard tubes. Time was short. She made up the beds without needing to move, pivoting from one side to the other, smoothing sheets, pulling up coverlets. Their desk was wedged between the doorjamb and the closet. Rachel stacked folders and righted a pencil cup. She nudged the computer mouse in doing so, and the monitor whirred to life. A screen-saver picture of Greg Louganis mid-dive was immediately covered by a dozen instant-message boxes and Lila’s (ldive4gold) and Melissa’s (mel5334) “we’re not here” automatic responses. Rachel clicked through a few, reading enough to make sure nothing smacked of forty-something-pervert-pretending-to-be-thirteen. There was a certain way you had to arrange the desk chair; to make enough room to get out, it needed to be pushed backward, toward the beds—not tucked under the desk, as one would think—and Rachel, who’d forgotten this, did an awkward little dance with chair and door before figuring it out.

Across the tiny landing was the bathroom, and next to that was Rachel and Bob’s room. Was there anything Melissa might use from her own closet? Rachel mentally scanned her gaudiest dresses for possibilities. But the thought of entering her own bedroom, and the sight of their oversized carved-wood bed and bulky matching dressers, everything too big for the space, depressed her. It was always stuffy in there too, mostly because of the single, oddly rectangle-shaped window, placed too high for any breeze to cool the room. Most nights, Rachel woke at least once with her skin on fire, heart pounding.

(Worse, the joke was on her: once, several years ago, between tenants, they had considered widening and replacing this window as part of a few projects to maintain the apartment and Rachel had been the one to successfully argue that it wasn’t necessary.)

Her mother probably had the right idea about bedrooms. On a first visit to 50 Greenham, Rachel had been startled by Winnie casually inviting her to peek into “Jerry’s” room—she glimpsed a high single bed with a tartan print blanket, and a pair of pants laid across an armchair—and then, down the hall, to “my” room.

“So you don’t…?” Rachel said, pointing at the distance between the two rooms.

“What?” Winnie asked with a twinkle, pretending not to understand. “A person likes her space. You’ll understand, down the road.”

“Doesn’t it make it hard to—you know? Sleeping apart?”

“Absolutely not!” Winnie laughed. “We visit each other,” she said, scissoring her fingers back and forth in a walking motion, from one room to another. Rachel couldn’t decide if this was practical or utterly romantic.

“But you and Dad always shared the same room.”

Winnie snorted. “Oh, that. Well, let’s just say that we slept well together.”

“Right. Never mind. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’m talking about sleep! We were compatible in that way.”

“And you and Jerry aren’t?” This was the first Rachel had heard of something not perfect about Winnie’s new love.

Her mother had flashed a tiny, inward smile, before moving on to show Rachel how they’d decorated the girls’ room. “We’re compatible in another way,” is all she’d said.

Bob took a potent cocktail of drugs before bed—he was still on anti-seizure medicine, as well as several others—and therefore slept a thick, unmoving eight hours every night. He slept better in the tiny, overheated apartment than he ever had in their airy, real bedroom. Infuriating. At one of Bob’s appointments last year, Rachel had once, only half joking, protested the strength of his nighttime drugs. “What if there’s a fire?” she said. “How on earth will I be able to rouse him?” One of the doctors had glanced over at Bob’s shaved head, and the scars. “Trust your luck more,” he’d said. “I would, if I had your kind.”

“Sure thing,” Rachel said aloud, turning sharply away from her bedroom. “Lucky me.”

She was supposed to be at Hand Me Down, but she had switched days as a favor to the other employee, Moira. On any other day, she would have been glad for the surprise day off, a chance to run errands and pick Melissa up from school herself. But now she was stuck with the costume problem. Rachel wandered from the living room to the kitchen and back again, eating an apple. Through the back wall, behind the couch, she could hear the clang and thud of Vikram’s mail drop through the front door slot and land noisily in his—her—front hall. A minute later, footsteps on the side path as the mailman wedged their own mail inside the screen door.

Rachel put her apple down on the coffee table and wiped her hand on her jeans. She found the phone number in a drawer in the kitchen and dialed, saying to herself even as she hatched the idea, He could be home. He could have a day off too. But of course he wasn’t, and the call itself was just for show. Rachel listened to the phone ring, in her handset, and the faint, practically unrelated echo from deep within the house. And then she hung up, and found the keys.

In less than a minute she had gone around front and was letting herself in, trying to look natural to anyone she knew who might be driving past. The heavy pop of the lock was a familiar, lost sound. Rachel busied herself with stepping neatly out of her clogs in the entranceway and pulling the door shut behind her, so that she could delay that first long look around her house. It was the first time she’d been back since they moved out.

He—Vikram—had reversed the dining and living rooms, and that was idiotic. Not that she was biased. Three modern sectional pieces (two white, one black) were arranged on a geometrical-print rug where Bob’s mother’s antique table used to be. A big framed still of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman hung over one couch, and a 3-D sort of sculpture (metal, twisted) took up space just outside the kitchen entrance where Rachel had always had a side table and matching mirror. A rough, dark wood table with benches instead of chairs was in the living room, draped with an elaborate red-and-gold runner and strewn with piles of mail and magazines, folders, empty soda cans, a laptop computer, and a bowl of half-eaten cereal. Where their couch had been, the one on which Bob had collapsed, was nothing now. Just empty space.

A cell phone rang somewhere in the house and Rachel’s heart stopped. Suddenly, the stupidity of this plan came crashing in, even as she wildly thought up unlikely, unnecessary alibis—just checking the…furnace. She took the stairs two at a time, saw with relief that the master bedroom’s door was closed, and hurried up another flight into the hot, musty attic.

There they were, neatly labeled plastic boxes, set amid the furniture Vikram had said it was fine to leave. Rachel tripped in her rush, and fell heavily, tearing her sleeve on the head of a nail protruding from one of the unfinished wood posts. She lurched upright, ignoring the stinging in both palms, and yanked at the boxes until the right one tumbled toward her. It was getting hard to breathe. The crib her babies had slept in, dismantled to dusty pieces leaning against the wall. The lamp they’d bought in Florence on Rachel’s thirtieth birthday. Her favorite chair, streaked with dirt.

“I’m fine,” she said out loud, teeth gritted. “It’s fine.” Jeans shirts skirts dresses no no no no no no no. Wait! Black shimmery polyester, with long, flappy sleeves. Perfect: Lila had worn it in a school play, and Rachel knew there was a hot-pink wig somewhere in the girls’ closet. “Funky witch. Kooky witch. Who gives a shit.” She heard herself, sounding crazy, but didn’t care. She started to stuff the other clothes back in, and then gave up, left it all a mess and bolted for the stairs in the grip of a panicky, powerful urge to get out.

She might have made it too, if it weren’t for the other doors, ajar, on the second floor. What she glimpsed made Rachel falter. It was something wrong, and it slowed her, still clutching the witch dress, and drew her over to the rooms inside—Lila’s, on the left. Melissa’s, right across the hall. Both were empty, completely empty. As echoing and empty as the day they had moved out. Rachel took a few unsteady steps into Melissa’s room and her throat closed. She touched the wallpaper, sobbing, the repeating pattern of pastel elephants holding each other’s tails.

“She’ll grow out of it so fast,” Rachel had protested, pregnant, when they were decorating another nursery. She loved their choice but wanted to be practical. “Or he will.”

“So, we’ll redo it,” Bob had said, swooping Lila up over his head in that way Rachel hated. “When he’s a surly teenager. Or she is. Maybe we’ll paint it black. Right, Ms. Big Sister?”

Because she was crying so completely, a shuddering, whole-body sort of weep, the sound of Vikram’s footsteps down the hall, and his sleepy-eyed presence in the doorway behind her, were somehow normal, as was the way he took her elbow and guided her to sit down on the floor, with her back against the wall. He knelt, in a half-crouch, asking without words if she was all right. Rachel signaled that she was, a half smile through the gasps. Then it was just a matter of time, of the sobbing’s needing to run itself out in a few more spasms.

Pine tree branches were scraping at the front window, the one that gave out onto Locust, like the sloppy dark-green paw of a huge dog.

“That used to drive Mel crazy,” Rachel said, pointing. She wiped her face with the witch dress. “It would wake her up at night.”

Vikram watched the needles mash against the panes. “It’s like being in a car wash, isn’t it? I guess I haven’t noticed.”

“I’ll call the tree guys this week to trim it back. You don’t want those branches this long over the winter—they get heavy with ice and then break off against the house.”

“Or I can do it.”

“What? No, you’d never manage. They’ve got this ladder on a truck—and these machines, automatic saw things—”

“I meant I could call them, if you’d like.”

“Oh.”

Rachel gingerly put the back of her head against the wall. Mentioning the tree guys brought it all back: last week’s mortifying fiasco at the high-school photo exhibit, and the strained, infuriating conversation she’d tried to have with her mother afterward, denying all the while that the real reason she was opposed to this pool was because she hadn’t been told anything about it before the rest of the town, when they were all treated to Winnie being publicly shamed by a bunch of vociferous tree huggers, whom no one even recognized as being from Hartfield, by the way. Why that mattered, Rachel couldn’t say, except she knew that it did. And the reason she was opposed to the pool was because it was total madness! You didn’t just drop a swimming pool in the front of an old property like that! So, Jerry’s back hurt—he could have massages! He could try yoga. Rachel told herself to be more sympathetic; after all, she knew about caring for someone in pain, how easy it was to get caught up in a desperate mission—how even the wackiest New Age cure-all could seem a reasonable, prudent form of treatment.

But—but…everyone went to Waugatuck to swim. They just did; they always had. No one had their own pool—it would be so gauche, so ostentatious, so…New Hartfield. Mom, you can’t just go around doing whatever you want in this town, Rachel had sputtered. Why on earth not? Winnie had demanded.

Rachel winced. Her whole body felt sore and shaky. She considered the various ways to extricate herself from this situation. Vikram was still squatting, his forearm resting on a knee, balancing with the fingertips of one hand on the floor. He wore shorts and a white Dartmouth T-shirt, and his face was puffy, a little creased.

“I woke you. I’m sorry—I didn’t think anyone was home.”

“My time zones are all mixed up. I flew in this morning from Jakarta, and I took a sleeping pill, so probably”—Vikram yawned, drowning himself out—“didn’t hear the doorbell.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Listen, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

Vikram stuck his bottom lip out. “All right,” he said cautiously. “It’s not about my girlfriend, is it?”

“Your—? No. Why would it be about your girlfriend?”

Vikram rubbed his face and gave a boyish smile of relief. “You’d be surprised how many things are,” he said. “Am I still asleep? I need to have some tea. Could we, please—”

“Of course,” Rachel said, taking his hand and allowing him to help her up. He held Melissa’s door, so she went first, out into the hall and down the stairs. “I cannot go into the kitchen,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“I know,” Vikram said.

When he emerged with a tray, Rachel was sitting on one of the sectional pieces in her dining room, gazing at the photo of Ingrid Bergman.

“I must be the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen Casablanca,” she said. “We rented it once, years ago, and even then I was so far behind—Bob was always after me to see it, and everyone’s always, ‘How can you not have seen Casablanca?’ but it just never seemed like the right time—anyway, so then we finally rented it, and the tape broke about fifteen minutes in. Now I figure it’s just my fate not to ever watch it. Thank you,” she said, about the mug of tea she’d been handed.

“Yours is herbal,” Vikram said, a bit pointedly. This struck Rachel as very funny. “My mother is a film professor,” he added.

“Wow,” Rachel said. “Back in India?”

“No, at UCLA.”

“Christ,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I just meant…I didn’t know you were from California, is all.”

“I grew up in Hoboken, and my mother moved to L.A. a few years ago, after my stepfather died. Does this have to do with the personal question?”

Rachel flushed. “Maybe I should go. This is all—pretty strange, for me. To be here.”

“You don’t have to,” Vikram said. “What were you going to ask me?”

“Well, okay. It has to do with money, and I just—you’re in business, right? I know Bob must have told me, but I forgot what it is you do, exactly—”

“I own a company that restructures other companies. Are you familiar with the energy industry?” She shook her head. “Right. Well, then that’s probably the best way to put it. Our primary market focus is South Asia.”

“That’s amazing—and you’re…what, not even thirty yet? No, never mind, just ignore that.” The tea was bitter, but its warmth had begun to restore Rachel. The throbbing behind her eyes eased, and the physical sense of being in this room—stupid couches notwithstanding—was seeping into her as a slow, unfolding peace. How many meals had she served in here? How many times had she pushed open that swinging door with one hip, plates in hand, children clamoring at the table? These walls recognized her. They righted her.

“It’s just…here’s the thing. My mother, who lives in Hartfield too, recently remarried. Did you hear about all this? No, of course not. Well, her new husband is being sued by his own daughter. Her name is Annette; she’s this Chicago—”

“Suing because…she disapproves of the marriage? On what grounds?”

“Well, it started as a business dispute. Her father—that’s Jerry, Mom’s husband—owns this company and Annette has some executive position. I don’t know the specifics, but apparently there was a disagreement that couldn’t be sorted out, so now it’s become a legal issue.”

“Not that uncommon, unfortunately. In family businesses.” Vikram leaned back. “It’s too bad for everyone involved, of course.”

“Well, now it’s getting more personal,” Rachel said. “Last week, Jerry called and asked if he could tell me something, in confidence. I said, fine. He says that Annette has filed a lien on the house, this house that they really shouldn’t have bought at their ages…but anyway. The daughter now has the lawyers arguing that this house my mother is living in is company property and actually part of the dispute and could be—”

“Why would it be company property?”

“Because Jerry bought it in cash. That he liquidated from company assets.”

“Ah,” Vikram said. “And I assume we’re not talking about an insignificant…”

“Two point four million dollars,” Rachel blurted. And that felt good, like cursing.

Vikram let out a low whistle. “I didn’t know Hartfield had properties in that range—unless, is it one of those newer developments? By the school?”

“No, no. It’s on Greenham Avenue. One of the oldest houses in town. You can barely see it from the road, since there’s so much wooded area in front. I mean, on Chicago’s North Shore this place wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but here in Hartfield—well, everybody knows about this house.”

“It sounds grand. But I don’t quite…why are you telling me this?”

Rachel set her mug on the sharp-edged glass coffee table. “It’s stupid, I guess. My mother doesn’t even know I know about this, and now she has this wild idea about putting in a swimming pool…and everything anyone says only gets her mind more set on it. But now with this lien on the house—doing anything like that would be, just, a bad idea, to say the least. Right?”

Vikram opened his mouth to respond, but Rachel went on. “And if I say anything about it, she’ll know I know. She’s not thinking clearly. Maybe that’s why Jerry called me.” She stopped. Actually, why was Jerry confiding in her? Maybe he saw her as a substitute for Annette. The idea made Rachel—well aware of her lack of business acumen—nervous. Aside from the matter of her loans, Rachel had thought that she and Jerry were striking up some kind of friendship.

“Anyway, my mother has this ridiculous conviction that all of his money doesn’t matter. I mean, I don’t even think she thinks about it, how much the house actually costs. Not that she’s accustomed to it or even feels entitled, really…but it’s weird, isn’t it? To practically ignore the fact that Jerry has this incredible wealth? No one in our family has anything like it. No one we know does—Hartfield’s just not that kind of place!”

Where was Vikram going? He had wandered away during this, into the foyer and back.

“Is this your mother?” He was holding up a copy of the local paper.

Rachel sighed. “It sure is.” The article about the debacle at the photography exhibit had mercifully limited its coverage of the protestors—Editors know these guys only want attention, Bob had said—but had included an unflattering photo of Winnie, frowning and in mid-sentence at the podium, with the caption, “Derailed! Local resident and exhibit participant Winifred (Easton) Trevis faces tough questions about historic tree on her property.” Winnie herself was laughing about it only the next day and had agreed to be interviewed by Melissa for a social studies paper on the event.

Vikram raised his eyebrows, reading silently. Rachel was surprised he even took the Bugle. What could he really care about in our town? she asked herself. Why did he choose to live all the way out here, anyway, all by himself? From there, it was only a short, inevitable step to Who is this man, barefoot and proprietary, making me tea in my own house on a Thursday afternoon?

“Jerry seems to think she should stay out of it, my mother. But don’t you think she needs to be clear on what’s at stake? I mean, at least she should know what she’s getting into. Not just float along with this whole love-is-all-you-need attitude.”

Vikram looked up quizzically. “Why?”

“Because—because it’s not realistic. And because other people are involved.”

“What does her husband—what does Jerry think? About this pool? Does he want it badly enough to face the possible consequences?”

Rachel started to speak, and then stopped. “Actually, I have no idea. She says it’s for his back pain, but as far as I know, he hasn’t spoken a word about this whole pool project, one way or another.”

“Well. It sounds as if there’s not much your mother could do, in any case, even if she did know about the lien. That’s what lawyers are for.” Vikram checked his watch—or his bare arm, anyway, rubbing at where his watch would be.

Rachel knew she had to go, but felt that something urgent needed to be clarified. “But how do you think it would look? To you, as an outsider. Not an outsider, but—you know what I mean. A brand-new pool, two old people—I mean, how much use would it get, anyway? Doesn’t it seem strange?”

Vikram waited for a moment before answering. “It’s impossible for me to say,” he said, not unkindly. And he held the door for her, as she gathered the witch costume for Melissa. She slid her clogs back on.

“Thank you for the tea. I’m sorry I bothered you.” Rachel wished she had sunglasses to put on.

“Mrs. Brigham—”

“Rachel, please.”

“Rachel. If you need to come in sometimes, just let me know. I am not unaware of the difficulties you must face—with our…situation.” Vikram waved his hand back and forth between the sides of the house—yours, mine. “And that it can be hard for the rest of your family too.”

“Why? Have the girls—I’m sorry about Melissa leaving her bike in front. We talked to her about that.”

“I’m talking about your husband. He was over, one time, not too long ago.”

“Bob? What did he do? What did he want?”

“He didn’t do anything, really. He had asked if he could just look around, and he said it had something to do with his writing, but I think what he wanted was simply to be here for a little while. He stood quietly in the room there for a few minutes, and then he just thanked me and left.”