If it didn’t hurt so much, I thought it might even be funny, Margaret’s timing. Michael’s timing. My own. The second I’d realized that I loved Clara—the night that Ben came home from his first business trip—Michael had swept in to claim her. Michael had held on ever since. The joke was that as soon as I recognized love, as soon as I named it, its object was no longer mine.
I paced the cabin and thought about how else I might lure them all back. I went upstairs and opened the windows—cracked them each a perfect inch. I stoked the downstairs fire, feeding it crumpled newspaper. The play mat, with its pervasive sour spit smell, sat empty in the corner of the living room, next to the leather couch. It had a quilted pattern, purple and green paisley next to pink and white polka dots. It looked like the patchwork of the ground seen from an airplane. It looked like a world I could fall into, if I lay down and inhaled the place where Clara had been. It looked like somewhere I might find her. I lay down, my head on the stain she’d left. I closed my eyes and let the dry heat of the fire hold me.