It is during my mother’s long exodus from our home that my new recurring dream begins. In this one, which I have nearly every night, almost every goddamn night for what will be the next three years, I confess my infidelity to my husband and we talk about all the experiences we have shared and all the mistakes we have made and decide to let each other go with love. Every morning, I wake with my lover’s name as my first conscious thought, and for a moment in that half-dream state, I believe my husband knows—that I have told him the truth and everything is okay. Then slowly, inching up my body the way awareness of Kathy’s death did in those early months, every firing neuron of joy dims and goes dark as I realize it has only been some Freudian wish fulfillment again, another of my cop-outs, and I am still a liar, still here.