Chapter 19: Day Sixty

Imogen woke at 5:40 on the sixtieth day and did not know what to do with her hands.

For sixty mornings they had known. Iron the sheets. Pin the hair. Check the boot tray. Write the number.

She lay still and listened to the house.

Griffin had gone to sleep in the sunroom the night before, on the wicker couch among his socks.

Neither of them had asked the other whether he should.

She dressed in the gray suit, because she did not own a different way to be brave, and she went down the hall.

The laminated sheet still hung on the guest-room door at his eye level.

THE HOUSE RULES. Shoes off. Sixty days. Separate rooms. No touching unless there is a reason. Knock.

She lifted it off its hook.

It was heavier than it looked, and she was shocked by how much she minded.

She carried it to the kitchen and stood in front of the bins.

There were three, each with its own label. PAPER. PLASTIC. GLASS.

She turned the sheet over. It was paper, but it had been laminated, and laminated paper was neither.

She stood there a full minute, with her whole life's system gone wrong in her hands.

In the end she lifted the lid of the fourth bin, GENERAL WASTE, which she had never once used, and let the sheet fall in.

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