Getting naked was the easy part. It was the outfits I balked at. Kat had been hoarding them in the closet of her office in a big, cardboard box marked “kitchen supplies”. There were riding breeches with the crotch cut out, a stewardess dress with snap-on boob covers, a rubber cat suit. It was absurd. I couldn’t stop laughing. Especially since Suky had basically been doing this to me since infancy: I was dressed up as Mae West at three, Jayne Mansfield at seven. Suky kept all my dress-up duds in a wooden box we called the “fun box”. Even now that Suky has left me, having politely, obligingly, and without fuss stopped breathing one foggy evening, even now I believe those bizarre and slightly creepy albums are stored somewhere in Chester’s basement. The pages may be disintegrating, eaten out by the acid in the cheap paper, but if you were to open one of those leatherette volumes you would be surprised to find not pictures of four boys and a girl, a healthy, happy family of the local pastor, but the likeness of only one child, a blond, slow-eyed girl in a skimpy dress and feather boa, staring the camera down. Pippa at one, at two, at three and five, at seven to fourteen, her expressions moving, as the years went by, from innocent cheer to a knowing, sullen stare, and finally to full-fledged hatred. So, I was a natural. Kat couldn’t believe it. I had no shyness at all in front of the camera. I looked at it as if it were a person I knew and didn’t like. That’s what she said, anyway. She said it was “pure Kitty.” Kitty, she explained, was every woman’s wild side. She was fearless.

In spite of all my devotion, in the early days of my marriage, there were moments when, like a wolf domesticated by humans, I caught a scent of my old ways and felt hemmed in. A beautiful young man walking by on the street, the sight of teenagers high in the park, sometimes threw me off balance; I could feel myself teeter on the edge of my new existence, and imagined the thrill of kissing a man I barely knew, or the sharp kick of amphetamine between my eyes.

“Mrs. Lee?” She heard the voice coming from inside the tobacco kiosk. She walked over to the iron gate and peered inside.

“I would like some cigarettes,” she called out into the darkness.

“What kind?” said the voice.

“Those white ones,” she said.

Chris Nadeau stood behind the counter of the Marigold Village convenience store, watching Pippa, who was standing in her nightgown, holding a large baking potato that she had retrieved from the bin, a plastic produce bag over her hand, her gaze fixed somewhere behind his head. “Marlboro Lights?” he asked helpfully. She didn’t respond. He leaned over the counter and brushed her arm with his fingers. Pippa felt his touch as a shock from the metal gate of the tobacco kiosk, but it was enough to rend the dream. She looked down at her nightgown, the potato in the baggie, her bare feet. As she looked up at Chris, his eyes filled with curiosity and concern, her mind gradually collected itself around her realization.

“Oh my God,” she said softly.

“Would you like me to take you home?” Chris asked. She nodded, handing him the potato.

“Killing yourself with a disposable razor. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before,” said Pippa as she knelt on the bathroom floor, bandaging Moira’s scraped up wrists. Moira, her face slippery with tears and snot, was sitting on the lid of the toilet, staring vacantly at the wall. Herb stood awkwardly in the doorway.

“She was in despair,” he said. Pippa looked up at him sharply. He looked pale and clammy. “She loves you, you know.”

“You should take a nap,” said Pippa dryly. She still couldn’t feel anything. It occurred to her that maybe she had actually stopped loving Herb without realizing it. No. That wasn’t it. She remembered adoring him only this morning. Then why was she such a blank? Pippa had bought the first aid supplies only a week earlier, on impulse, to stock Herb’s office bathroom. As she taped them around Moira’s wrists, something loosened from her mind and fell away, like a clump of earth from a crumbling dam. And all of a sudden, she was flooded with relief. It was her guilt that had fallen away, she realized, and landed right on Moira, smashed her to smithereens. Poor Moira. This is what guilt did to a person. Pippa felt time spinning back, back, back, until the bullet reversed out of Gigi’s brain, and she was innocent of murder, innocent of betrayal.