Another muffled cry rose from the ground, and Greg was already reaching for the shovel again. “I’m trying to widen the gap without the whole thing collapsing on top of them.”
I stood over him in my nightgown, hugging my own arms against the September chill, and let all of it wash over me — the empty side of the bed, the vanished blanket, the whispered “sweetheart,” the dead-of-night dig in our backyard — and none of it made a single shred of sense yet.
“Greg,” I said, my voice cracking somewhere between fury and fear, “you have been leaving our bed every night for three weeks. You lied to me about your back. You took Michael’s blanket and told me you’d donated it. I heard you call something ‘sweetheart’ through the floor, and now I’ve found you burying — digging — in the yard at two in the morning. Somebody owes me an explanation, and it had better be a good one.”
