A car door closed.

The back door unlocked. Mark walked in, carrying two canvas bags of groceries. He was wearing his work jacket, his hair slightly damp from the evening mist. He was smiling.

“Clara, honey, I got those apples Maya wanted,” he called out, stepping into the kitchen.

He stopped.

His eyes went from Clara, who was standing by the refrigerator with her arms crossed, to me, sitting at the kitchen table.

Mark froze. The grocery bags slipped from his hands. A jar of marinara sauce hit the linoleum and shattered, red sauce spreading across the floor like oil.

An apple rolled slowly toward my foot. I didn’t move.

“Sarah?” he stammered. His face went completely white. It was the color of skim milk. “What… what are you doing here?”

He looked at Clara, his voice rising in panic. “Clara, what is she doing here? This is my sister. She’s having an episode. She must have followed me. Sarah, we need to get you back to the clinic.”

It was the most pathetic thing I had ever heard. He was still trying to play the script. He was still trying to keep the two worlds from colliding, even as the walls were falling down around him.

Clara stepped forward. She didn’t scream. She just looked at him with an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust. “She showed me the wedding license, Mark. She showed me the photos from Hocking Hills. She showed me your tax returns.”

Mark’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He looked like a fish gasping for air on a dry dock. He looked at me, then back at Clara. The silence in the kitchen was heavy, broken only by the hum of the old refrigerator.

“It’s over, Mark,” I said. I picked up the silver keychain from the table and dropped it into the red sauce on the floor. “I’ve already called a locksmith for the house in Parma. And my lawyer has already drafted the freeze on our joint accounts.”

He tried to take a step toward me, his hands out. “Sarah, please. You don’t understand.

We were hurting. After the IVF… I didn’t know how to handle it. I made a mistake.”