13

Day after day she thought about the fact that the agreement would expire with winter. And even though it felt endless, she would endure that final triad. She could not bear the thought of complicating Tay’s life so profoundly. Yet her conscience receded into the background every time she saw Tay’s distant approach to their companionship. It no longer seemed endearing to her. All these feelings churned constantly and, in the force of domestic solitude, shifted quite literally from hour to hour.

As if awakened from a dream, Mishi eventually saw her own hands passing an envelope to a courier. The one bearing Rohn’s address, containing the entire truth about her marriage, was meant to carry her suffering away.

But when it was done and she gave in to her impulse, fear seized her at once. Suddenly she could not comprehend how she had even come to write something like that. With the awareness of what she had done, she wandered through the house, yet was incapable of doing anything. A hundred times in her mind she tore the letter to shreds in anger and then put it back together again. She did not know whether what she had done was the best thing possible—or the very worst idea she had ever had.

…

After an afternoon filled with self-reproach, evening came, and she stood on the front veranda looking toward the road bathed in the light of the setting sun. With the image of swaying branches before her, she considered writing to Rohn again.

And as she watched the road, a car approached. It was more than familiar. It was Rohn’s. Her heart began to pound instantly, and all thoughts of letters, of Tay, of treatment, and of peace in her beautiful own home vanished at once. She rushed into the hallway, grabbed her coat, and ran out after Rohn.