Chapter 1

By Saturday night her best friend would have a hand in her nephew’s trunks and Tanya wouldn’t stop her. By Sunday she’d be a different woman in her own house. This is how it got there.

Her sister called on a Tuesday.

“Luke lost the apartment,” Karen said. “The plant cut him and he got behind. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Karen was the youngest of the three girls. Tanya was the oldest. That’s how it had always worked. Somebody’s kid was in trouble, somebody’s car died, somebody cried on the phone — they called Tanya.

“Send him here,” Tanya said. “I’ve got Megan’s room.”

She said it fast, before she could think about it too much. Then she stood in her kitchen after she hung up and listened to how quiet the house was and knew the real reason she’d said yes so fast, and it wasn’t Megan’s room.

The house had been quiet for two years.

Dale left on a Saturday morning with two suitcases and a look on his face like a man late for something. He’d been seeing some dumb bitch from Edina for four months. Young enough to be his kid. Tanya found out the way everybody finds out in a town that size — a woman from church told her in the grocery store parking lot, hand on her arm, eyes shining with it.

She kept the house. She kept the four acres. She kept the job at the co-op. She got rid of his recliner and his tools went to his brother and she scrubbed his smell out of the bedroom with bleach water and slept in the middle of the bed like a starfish for a month trying to feel like it was hers.