Coat pocket. I felt for my keys with mittened fingers, still crunching along. Twenty-one steps from the bottom of the stairs to the parking lot. Thirty-three more to the car. I turned the key in the ignition, switched on the front and rear defroster before I realized I hadn’t been gone from the car long enough for it to frost over. Even though it was only twenty-eight degrees outside. I looked at the clock.  

   9:17.

   Eleven-and-a-half years of marriage. Took less than fifteen minutes to end it. And Jason hadn’t even bothered to show up. He was probably at work right now. Was he looking up at the clock at this very second? Waiting, nervous, wondering if it was finally all over? Only four-and-a-half miles away from where I was sitting right now. Or maybe it was forty or four hundred. And-a-half.

   I pulled onto the main road, headed towards Hillside Café for a coffee and a newspaper and--with luck--maybe a little pick me up.

   I was in luck. The old marquee sign beside the road was lit.

   The place was empty like I knew it would be mid-morning on a Wednesday. By lunchtime it would be packed. Specials: turkey club; cheeseburger basket; spaghetti with meat sauce; and for dessert--of course--the latest gossip. Hot and juicy and fresh. I’d be gone long before then anyway, either asleep or floating on a cloud. Or both.

   The shelves on the far wall were filled with basketball trophies, pictures of champions. Glory days. Jason was there, King of the champions.

   He was everywhere.

   “What the hell do you want?”

   I jumped. Coach Poulin. Why was he here so early?

   “Black coffee. Newspaper.”

   Hard eyes. Silver stare. And I was there alone. Small. He gave me a cold smile.

   “You fucking whore. Go get it somewhere else.”

   Too tired for rage, too empty. Too cold. Not even a flicker. And in that land of numbed unreality a dispassionate realization. I did the backwards math.

   He’d been waiting for eighteen years to say that to me.

   I turned away from the silver man, walked to my car. Lost count of the steps after sixteen. I drove to the Qwik Stop where curious stares greeted me, but no open hostility. I brought the paper to the car and snapped it open right there in the parking lot. A bold, black lettered headline on the front page read:    Murder in New Mills.

   I skimmed through the story, only vaguely interested because

   while it was tragic, this wasn’t the reason I’d bought the paper. But one sentence jumped off the page.

   Cleaning service. Small community. How many cleaning services could one small community support?

   Section D. Classifieds.

   One more question. I opened my glove compartment and dug out my Gazetteer. New Mills was sixty-two miles from Brookfield. Sixty-two glorious miles. From my mother. From Jason. From everybody. It seemed like the closest thing to a sign from God that I could ever hope to receive. Sober at least.

   I dug out my cell phone and dialed the number. An old man answered, very thick Downeast accent. “Ayuh. The apartment’s still available.”

   He quoted the price. Cheap. Almost too cheap. What was wrong with the place?

   “Nothing. It’s small, but it’s a good little house. Me and my wife raised our family there. Cut it in two after she died. Oh, ‘bout fifteen years ago that’d be now.”

   Duplex? In the middle of nowhere?

   “Sounds good, Mr. Baxter.”

   “Charlie. I can give you a tour tomorrow. Can you be down here at ten-thirty?”

   Sure could. Might as well, even though a tour was a formality. The only thing that would prevent me taking the place would be a rat infestation.

   I hung up the phone and hurried back to my brother’s house. I’d been holding it down long enough and I knew it was coming. Better to have the breakdown in private. At least, as private as I could with my sister-in-law at home.

   “Hey Kim.”

   “How did it go?” Sympathetic eyes. Sepia eyes.

   I shrugged and gave her a brief smile, then trudged on to the bathroom. I closed the door silently and leaned back against it, closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see Jason’s face. It didn’t work. It was still there, blonde and blue, covered with the trim, gorgeous beard that I had always loved. I could still remember the way it felt beneath my fingertips, on my face, my breasts. Scratchy and rough and perfect and…

   I turned on the exhaust fan to drown out the noise, then dropped to my knees and

   vomited quietly.

   I washed my hands, brushed my teeth and tongue vigorously, relishing the mint, then bleached the toilet clean and washed my hands again. Lavender soap. Mint and lavender. They danced together in my mind, the scents gradually giving way to colors, and that was even better.

   I looked at my reflection, practiced my smile and walked back out into the living room. Kim and I talked for a few minutes about infant car seats, then I excused myself. I wandered to the guest bedroom, my home for the past five months, lay down on the bed and fell asleep in my clothes. Slept forever.