[...] It was the season my blue-eyed, crooked-smiled, trusting husband was spending a fat wad of cash remodeling a house he believed he would die in, with me by his side. It was the season of accumulated dread from years of carefully parceling out sex I didn’t want to have, with a couple of glasses of wine beforehand to get myself through it with good cheer and a headache in the morning—the season of artificial smiles and an underlying simmering snideness and derision to which I was not entitled but which leaked out of my mouth and showed on my face nonetheless. It was the season I lost control of a narrative I finally understood I’d never had any right to control to begin with.