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head. “I need to get away, too, Frank, from Edwin and Oak Park. And you. I need to sort things out.” She wiped her eyes and shrugged. “I have to find the path that’s right for me.”
    After a few minutes, Mamah watched him climb disconsolately into his car and wait while she lit her headlights and drove off. She had done the right thing, the hard thing. But there wasn’t an ounce of relief in it.

CHAPTER 8

    M amah and Edwin looked up at the same moment when they heard the hammering. The June sun was already blazing at eight A.M. , and the concrete stoop was warm under her feet. Leaning against the Belknaps’ house was a tall ladder. On it, a carpenter carefully pieced clapboard strips into a second-floor window opening.
    “How odd,” Edwin said, pulling off his suit coat and flinging it over his arm. “That’s a bedroom closet window, isn’t it? Why on earth would they want to board it up?”
    Mamah gnawed at a cuticle. “I don’t know.”
    He shrugged. “People are strange. A perfectly good window, even if it’s in a closet.” Edwin kissed her forehead, then walked out to the street.
    She slouched on the stoop. A woodpecker drilled a tree somewhere in counterpoint to the hammering. She noticed that tiny box elder seedlings had sprung up in her flower bed from the winged seeds of the neighbors’ tree. She bent down and yanked them out of the soil.
    I wish you were cruel, Edwin,
she thought.
I wish you were devious or lazy or selfish. Anything but kind.
    Mamah looked up at the window and wondered what the neighbor girls had seen last summer. Was it Frank’s hand over hers, a kiss, or worse? And why were the Belknaps boarding up the window now? She pictured the girls continuing their watching through the winter, hoping to see more. Had they been caught by their mother and confessed?
    Only three days left before she boarded a train for Boulder. Three days. But she saw clearly now what she needed to do.
When Edwin comes home tonight,
she thought,
I’ll tell him the truth. Before someone else does.
    Mamah’s sister Lizzie appeared from around the corner of the house, headed out somewhere. She came to a halt when she saw Mamah’s face. “Are you all right? You look ill.”
    “No.”
    “No what? Are you sick?”
    “Do you have a minute to talk?”
    Lizzie’s eyes traveled up the ladder to the boarded-up window. Her face registered guilt when she looked back at Mamah, as if she had been caught in a lie of her own. “Of course, Mame.” She put down her satchel and sat down on the stoop.
    “I’m not sick, Liz, but I’m not well, either. There’s something…” Mamah backed up and started over. “Ed and I haven’t been happy lately. I suppose you know that.”
    Lizzie reached into her bag and pulled out her cigarettes. She handed one to Mamah, then took her time lighting it and one for herself. “Is it Frank Wright this is about?”
    “So you know.” Mamah glanced at Lizzie’s face but could tell nothing. Clear of emotion as an alabaster egg. “Does Edwin know, too?”
    “I’m not sure how he could miss it.” Lizzie’s tone was matter-of-fact. “But I suppose it’s possible.”
    Mamah stared at the pavement, her stomach in knots. “I’ve lost myself, Liz.”
    Her sister drew deeply on her cigarette. “People make mistakes. You can fix this.”
    “No. I mean, it’s more than Frank. I married Edwin and slowly…” She shrugged. “Right now I feel as though if I stay in this house, if I go on pretending much longer, whatever is left of me is going to just smother.”
    Lizzie looked into her eyes. “Frank Wright isn’t helping your situation.”
    “But he is. Frank made me remember who I was before. I can
talk
to him, Liz. I could never really talk to Ed.” Mamah laughed sadly. “Sometimes I think the reason he and I have lasted as long as we have is because you are at the dinner table to keep the conversation going.” She wiped an eye with her wrist.
    “Go clear out your