white once upon a time, and it had come with a mustard-yellow refrigerator. Hen actually loved the vintage-y fridge but despised the rest of it. Still, if she changed it around she’d do something more exciting than what Mira had done with her kitchen.
“Oh, good. You got coffee.” Mira was entering the kitchen. She hadn’t changed, exactly, but she’d put on a sweatshirt—also with a UNH logo—over her shirt. It wasn’t cold in the house, and Hen quickly decided that Mira was being modest, covering up just how much the well-worn T-shirt had revealed of her body.
“I did. It’s delicious. Where are you flying to?”
Mira hesitated for a brief moment, then said, “Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“Oh,” Hen said, unable to come up with anything to say about that particular location.
“You know, I almost forgot where I was going. It’s always the same. I stay at a Marriott that’s near the airport and right next to a Chili’s or an Outback.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, I love it. It’s just . . . it’s not glamorous. You tell people you travel a lot for work and they think you’re jetting around, living the life.”
“I know you already told me, but you sell . . . educational software, right?”
“To school systems mainly. Charlotte is one of my biggest clients. I’m there a lot.”
“Matthew doesn’t mind?”
“That I’m away a lot? He says he does, but who knows? I’d hate it if it were the reverse. I don’t like being alone, and I just don’t think he minds it.”
“So it all works out,” Hen proclaimed, putting down her mug of coffee.
“Shall we do the tour again? Want to see upstairs?”
“Sure,” Hen said. “If I’m not intruding.”
They went so slowly through the house, Mira clearly thrilled to be able to talk about every design decision, that Hen began to worry they’d never make it back to Matthew’s office. Upstairs, they looked at the master bedroom, Mira saying, “I think it’s really important where you place the bed. Have you noticed the morning light that the bedrooms get?”
Hen said she had, but only because it woke her up at an ungodly hour.
They looked at the guest room, twin beds plus a quilt on the wall that looked Indian to Hen, and then they entered the third upstairs room, a room toward the front of the house with a sloped ceiling. The walls were painted a bright, cheery yellow. On top of a table were a sewing machine and a few stacks of fabric.
“My craft room, but, honestly, I never really use it,” Mira said. “It was going to be a nursery, but . . .”
“You tried to have children?” Hen asked.
“We did. For about three years. It just never happened, and now we’re okay with it. It makes life easier, not having kids, don’t you think?”
“I do. Definitely easier.”
“Not that . . . Are you planning—”
“No, it’s off the table.”
“Can I ask why?” Mira said.
Hen was surprised by the question, but not annoyed. “I have health problems—” she started.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, you didn’t. I’m . . . I suffer from depression and, honestly, I’m just not willing to go off my medication, which I would need to do if I got pregnant. I’m also not sure that I want to pass along my brain to the next generation.” She laughed to let Mira know it was okay to laugh as well.
“I’m so surprised,” Mira said. “You seem like a really happy person.”
“I’m doing really well now,” Hen said, thinking, I am a happy person, always have been. But that’s just my personality, which has nothing to do with this broken brain that periodically and very convincingly tells me that I’m a worthless person who doesn’t deserve to live.
Then Mira said, “My grandfather, who I was very close to, was depressed, too.”
“Yeah?” Hen said. One result of her decision to always be open about her mental illness was that people always seemed to have a story of their own, ranging from the trivial to the tragic.
“He killed himself when I was fourteen.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, Mira.”
“It was a long time ago. I tell myself that he was sick and that the sickness killed him.”
“That’s a good way to think about it,” Hen said, and found herself warming up to Mira. It was a habit of Hen’s, and not one she was proud of, that she was often interested only in people who’d suffered in some way.
They moved downstairs, looking again at the kitchen, Hen making sure