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.

“Your bed stays here,” Ed said.

“It’s her bed,” Madeline said. “I don’t mind if she takes it.” She said it to hurt Abigail, to hurt her back, to show that she didn’t care that Abigail was moving out, that she would now come to visit on weekends, but her real life, her real home would be somewhere else. But Abigail wasn’t hurt at all. She was just pleased she was getting the bed.

“Hey,” said Ed from the bedroom door.

“Hey,” said Madeline.

“Abigail should be packing her own clothes,” said Ed. “Surely she’s old enough.”

Maybe she was, but Madeline did all the laundry in the house. She knew where things were in the wash, dry, fold, put-away assembly line, so it made sense for Madeline to do it. Ever since Ed had first met Abigail, he’d always expected just a little too much of her. How many times had she heard those exact words? “Surely she’s old enough.” He didn’t know children of Abigail’s age, and it seemed to Madeline that he always shot just a little too high. It was different with Fred and Chloe, because he’d been there from the beginning. He knew and understood them in a way he never really knew and understood Abigail. Of course, he was fond of her, and he was a good, attentive stepdad, a tricky role he’d taken on immediately without complaint (two months after they began dating, Ed went with Abigail to a Father’s Day morning tea at school; Abigail had adored him back then), and maybe they would have had a great relationship except that Nathan the prodigal father had returned at the worst time, when Abigail was eleven. Too old to be managed. Too young to understand or control her feelings. She changed overnight. It was as though she thought showing Ed even just basic courtesy was a betrayal of her father. Ed had an old-fashioned authoritarian streak that didn’t respond well to disrespect, and it certainly compared unfavorably to Nathan’s let’s-have-a-laugh persona.

“Do you think it’s my fault?” said Ed.

Madeline looked up. “What?”

“That Abigail is moving in with her dad?” He looked distressed, uncertain. “Was I too hard on her?”

“Of course not,” she said, although she did think it was partly his fault, but what was the point in saying that? “I think Bonnie is the real attraction,” she said.

“Do you ever wonder if Bonnie has had electric-shock treatment?” mused Ed.

“There is a kind of blankness about her,” agreed Madeline.

Ed came in and ran his hand over one of the posts of Abigail’s bed. “I had a hell of a job putting this together,” he said. “Do you think Nathan will be able to manage it?”

Madeline snorted.

“Maybe I should offer to help,” said Ed. He was serious. He couldn’t bear to think of a DIY job being done badly.

“Don’t you dare,” said Madeline. “Shouldn’t you be gone? Don’t you have an interview?”

“Yeah, I do.” Ed bent to kiss her.

“Someone interesting?”

“It’s Pirriwee Peninsula’s oldest book club,” said Ed. “They’ve been meeting once a month for forty years.”

“I should start a book club,” said Madeline.

Harper: I will say this for Madeline: She invited all the parents to join her book club, including Renata and me. I already belong to a book club, so I declined, which is probably just as well. Renata and I always enjoyed quality literature, not those lightweight, derivative best sellers. Pure fluff! Each to their own, of course.