For a moment it felt like someone had plugged her into an electrical socket. Fear charged through her limbs, settling in her bowels like greasy food. She doubled over, hitting her forehead on the lip of the desk, but hardly feeling it. Bent with her head between her knees and her hands clutching her calves, she pushed air through her lips to keep from wailing. Everything inside Winnie was screaming, but she had to keep control. She lifted her head again, glanced briefly at the screen before exiting out of it, and turned the computer off. She wanted to ask Nigel if this was some sort of cruel joke, but she knew in her gut he’d never do something like that, not when his hands were as covered in guilt as hers. There was also the fact that neither Nigel nor her son liked to read library books; it was new or nothing. Either way, she had to find out.

She texted Samuel. Did you check out a library book lately?

Last time I went to the library was on a fourth-grade field trip.

Why couldn’t he just answer her? It was yes or no—that simple. Everything had to be a snarky little game with him. If she’d said that to her own mother when she was Samuel’s age...

And then all of her anger evaporated. She was lucky he’d even answered; lately, he wanted nothing to do with her. That was the essential difference between her mother’s parenting and her own: her mother didn’t care what her kids thought of her. Winnie tried not to think about how much she cared as she got up from the desk to check the junk drawer for her library card. She rifled past a hairbrush with a broken handle, a jump rope, and a box of press-on nails before she found it. It was under the stack of instruction manuals and receipts, pushed to the far corner of the drawer. She held it in her palm, staring at it hard. The library must have made a mistake; she’d sort it out.

But when she called the library, they said she had indeed checked out Child Abduction: A Theory of Criminal Behavior on October 5.

“It wasn’t me,” she said firmly. “I haven’t been to the library in years. I don’t even know where my library card is!” She glanced guiltily at the junk drawer.

“Well then somebody else has your card,” said the guy on the other end of the line. “And they owe five dollars and seventy-two cents in fees. Will you be paying it? I can take your debit card right over the phone.”

When Winnie ended the call, she cried. She hadn’t cried in a long time and it felt good to let the drama loose, as her mother used to say. She’d been too busy to be scared lately, but here it was: a library book, reminding her that at any moment her entire life could be torn apart.

If she told Nigel about this, he’d just blow it off, and then it would end up in another big, fat fight. She was tired of those, obviously, since she even refused to fight about his infidelity. She was desperate for peace and for her son to like her again, and for her secrets to stay secret.

She went to look at the library card again, really examine it under the light. There was chocolate melted on one corner and most of the writing was scratched away.

She walked straight to the pantry and pulled out Nigel’s secret bottle of Jack Daniel’s—this time hidden in the bread box. Without bothering to get a glass, she unscrewed the cap and drank directly from the lip. A trickle of whiskey ran down her chin as she coughed and sputtered. Her eyes burned like she’d poured the whiskey straight over her pupils, and she squeezed them closed as her stomach lurched in protest. Better, Winnie thought. When I’m retching my guts up, I don’t think about the scary shit.

No wonder her husband liked this stuff. She held the bottle up to the light, swirling it around. Her father had been a whiskey drinker, and when Nigel ordered it stiff on their first date, just as her father would have, she’d fallen for him right then and there. And then of course she’d banned him from drinking it (after the death of her father, due to said whiskey), but that was only to put the fear of God in him. Winnie knew he drank, but because he wasn’t supposed to, he watched how much, and where, and who with.

She wandered around the rooms downstairs, holding the bottle of whiskey by its neck and occasionally taking tentative sips. By the time she walked through the kitchen for the second time, the bottle was considerably lighter, and Winnie could feel every single ounce of alcohol chortling through her system. It was awful and wonderful at the same time. She made a right out of the kitchen and found herself swaying near the computer, and all of a sudden she remembered everything she was trying to forget, only now she was drunk. It was worse drunk than sober. Winnie was a sad drunk, a dark drunk; she thought of bad things when there was alcohol in her. It had been like that since before her dad died, the nature of his death only solidifying her distaste for the foul stuff.

She leaned her hip against the wall and a few seconds later, her head. Winnie was dizzy and she wanted to hurl. That’s what her dad used to say—hurl. She started to cry, and then she did hurl.

      20

   WINNIE

As it turned out, the alcohol wasn’t the only thing swirling around Winnie’s stomach. The following day unearthed the virus. It hit them in tandem, so it was hard to know who to blame. At first Winnie thought she was being punished with a hangover the size of Kilimanjaro, but when she heard Nigel stumble through the door at noon, heading straight for the downstairs bathroom, she knew Samuel would probably soon follow. Winnie, who had never left for work, was upstairs in a similar position, her face noticeably green as she leaned over the toilet, expelling her bad choices along with the virus. They met in the kitchen accidentally, both in search of water. It was an awkward standoff, one in which Winnie felt like the victor when Nigel looked away first and skulked toward the fridge. It was as she watched the back of his head that it occurred to her that he had brought home this sickness, brought it right from Dulce fucking Tucker. Winnie and Nigel had both shared the same almost empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, slurping after hours to hide their sin. It was the insult that sent her over the edge, the audacity of Nigel to humiliate her by entertaining another woman. How he hid his bottle all over the pantry, too drunk to put it in the same place as before. Was life with her so unbearable? It wasn’t like she’d let herself go, or that she ignored her husband. He’d just chosen to do this to her and now she was sick as a consequence, sick as a dog. She couldn’t wait her turn for the water, her stomach was rolling. Winnie ran for the stairs angry as all hell.

She came out of the bathroom a good deal later and stumbled over to her side of the bed, feeling moderately better. She’d glanced at herself in the mirror on the way out of the bathroom and had seen a gray waxy face bearing two dark holes instead of eyes. Her hair was matted down and stringy, stuck to her face. She swept it back into a low ponytail as she walked slowly toward the bed. Her phone lit up on the nightstand and she grabbed for it as she pulled down the covers, hesitating briefly when she saw that it was Dakota who was texting her. Dakota, who’d been staying with their mother, was getting worse instead of better. Despite all of her brother’s grandiose efforts to win back his wife, Manda wasn’t having it this time. He’d left message after message, begging each of his sisters to reason with Manda. Winnie set the phone facedown on the nightstand and crawled into the bed, already beginning to shake from fever. It was as she gazed longingly toward the bathroom, wishing she’d drunk straight from the faucet, that she spotted the sweating glass of water next to the bed. At the sight of it, Winnie started to cry. Nigel had brought it to her; Nigel had not abandoned her despite how cold he was being. She lifted the glass to her lips and drank it all.