dirty, sometimes stained, reeking of cigarette smoke. I’d find them hanging in my closet like that. When I asked her about it, she’d gaze at my filthy clothing and say, You think I actually wore that ugly shirt of yours?
Because on top of everything else, she was mean.
I put a lock on my bedroom door. That didn’t stop her.
Somehow, she still found a way in. I’d come home from a night out to find my door open, my things rifled through.
I didn’t want to live like that.
I offered to move out, to let her keep our place. She was angry to the point of being combative. Something about her scared me. She couldn’t afford the unit all on her own, she told me, seething. She got in my face, told me I was crazy, that I was a psychopath.
I held my ground. I didn’t flinch.
I said calmly, I could say the same about you.
In the end, she was the one to leave. That was best, seeing as I’d recently met Will, and needed a place where we could hang out. Even after, I had my suspicions that she was still letting herself in, going through my things. She’d given me her key back, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t taken it to the hardware store first and made a copy of it to keep. In time I had the locks changed. That, I told myself, would have to stop her. If I thought she was still coming in, it was only my paranoia speaking.
Still, that wasn’t the end of her. Because I saw her some six months ago or so, when I passed her on the street, not far from Will’s and my home. She looked the same to me, strutting her stuff down Harrison, just as arrogant as she’d always been. I ducked away when I saw her, slipped down another street.
It was just after graduation when Will and I met, at the engagement party of a friend. Will and I have different versions of the time we met. What I know is that he came up to me at the party, handsome and gregarious as ever, thrust out a hand and said, Hey there. I think I’ve seen you before.
What I remember is feeling awkward and insecure that night, the awkwardness abating ever so slightly with the cheesy pickup line. He hadn’t, of course, seen me before. It was a come-on, and it worked. We spent the rest of the night intertwined on the dance floor, my insecurities lessening the more I had to drink.
We’d been dating only a couple of months when Will suggested he move into my apartment with me. Why he was single, I didn’t know. Why he chose me over all the other beautiful women in the city of Chicago, I also didn’t know. But for whatever reason, he insisted he couldn’t stand to be away from me. He wanted to be with me all the time. It was a romantic notion—no one had ever made me feel as desired as Will did back then—but it made sense financially, too. I was finishing up my residency and Will his PhD. Only one of us was earning an income, albeit a small one, most of which went to repay med school debt. But still, I didn’t mind covering the rent. I liked having Will with me all the time. I could do that for him.
Not long after, Will and I got married. Shortly after that, Dad died, taken from this world of his own volition. Cirrhosis of the liver.
We had Otto. And then, years later, Tate. And now I find myself living in Maine.
To say I wasn’t completely bowled over when word arrived that Will’s sister had left us a home and child would be a lie. Will always knew about the fibromyalgia, but we learned about the suicide from the executor of the estate. I didn’t think any good could come from our moving to Maine, but Will disagreed.
The months before had been merciless and unsparing. First, Otto’s expulsion, followed immediately by the discovery of Will’s affair. It wasn’t days after that that a patient of mine died on the table. I’d had patients die before, but this one nearly wrecked me. He’d had a pericardiocentesis done, a relatively safe and routine procedure where fluid is aspirated from the sac that surrounds a person’s heart. When I looked back at my medical notes, the procedure was well warranted. The patient was suffering from a