deep in thought, music blaring in my ears, when Henry tapped my shoulder. Flustered, I fumbled to turn off the vacuum and yank out my earbuds.
“Do you like lobster?” he asked.
I blinked.
“I usually do a surf-and-turf kind of dinner on Fridays,” he said. “I get a couple of lobsters from the market.”
I nodded, wondering why he had stopped me from vacuuming, trying to think if I’d ever seen someone purchase a lobster out of one of those tanks.
“How many people are you cooking for tonight?” he said.
“Two,” I said.
“Well, I’ll pick you up a couple,” he said. “I appreciate you doing the extra work for our party.”
I stammered out a thank-you. I had never encountered a client being so kind to me, treating me like a human being. I didn’t know how to receive it. Besides, I’d eaten whole lobster only once or twice in my life and had no idea how to cook one. I already felt guilty that I would most likely screw up this generous gift with my less-than-savvy cooking skills.
Henry left a few minutes later, bringing the dogs with him. It was the first time he’d left me at the house alone. I beamed in his trust for me. I was so used to feeling distrusted. I thought about the woman at the Farm House, who had been home the first time I cleaned, puttering around, circling back to where I was. It felt like she was trying to bait me by leaving jewelry sitting out instead of inside the drawers.
When I stuck my hand into my pocket to get my phone, I looked around, even though the house was empty and no one would be watching me. I dialed Travis’s number, and when he answered, I excitedly told him about the lobsters. I asked him to pull a couple of the steaks I’d found on clearance out of the freezer. There was something about sharing good news with him, this good fortune, that made me feel hope for us again.
But he did not acknowledge the lobster or the steaks. Instead, he said in a flat voice, “Did you check your car’s transmission fluid?”
“Yes, it’s low,” I said, feeling deflated. I stopped looking at the painting, one of those metallic-looking ones of a lighthouse, in Henry’s hallway and glanced down at my stocking feet, smudging one sock into the shiny wood floor.
Perhaps Travis’s way of expressing his love for me was to ask about my car, but I couldn’t hear it. Communication with my family was sporadic, and I needed him. “I love you,” I said, just as we were ending the call, but he didn’t say it back.
After we hung up, I started on Henry’s bathroom, disappointment from the conversation with Travis lingering. Henry came home just as I reached to stick a rag in the toilet to scrub it out.
“Do you know how to handle these things?” he said, his voice echoed off the walls, making me jump. When I turned around, he motioned for me to follow him to the laundry room. There, on top of the washer I’d just cleaned, were two of the biggest lobsters I’d ever seen. They were brownish red. They were alive. And they were mine.
Henry handed me printed-out cooking instructions and a set of shiny shell crackers.
“You know,” I said, rubbing the silver of the utensil with my thumb, “you could be saving my relationship.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, looking at me with a mixture of interest and amusement.
“Yeah,” I said, then shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “We’ve been arguing a lot. Money and all that.”
“Well,” he said, crossing his arms, “I’m sorry to hear that.” He looked me square in the eyes, squinting a little, pointing a shell cracker at my nose. “When it stops bein’ fun, it stops bein’.”
Those words stayed in my head for the rest of the day. Travis and I didn’t have the same type of fun. He liked to drive recreational vehicles in fast circles, while I liked drinking small-batch brewed beer accompanied with conversations about politics and books. We tried compromising. He often sat outside with me at night to have a beer and gaze at the huge garden we’d built in the corner of the yard. Between our differences was Mia—bouncing, happy, wrapping her arms around both of us. In those moments, we felt like a real family, and I fought to feel the love and joy that she felt. But I knew I would never understand Travis’s