The Lost Husband Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’d discover that she never used paper towels, composted the leftovers of every fruit or vegetable that came through the house, and saved all her old shower, rain, and cooking water to pour onto her garden. She had solar panels on her roof. She went to “the church of nature,” only ate meat that came in trade from friends, and did yoga at sunrise every morning to greet the day.
    She was about as different from my mother as you could get. My mom had certainly been right about that. But she hadn’t been right about what Jean’s life actually looked like. The grizzled old survivalist’s hovel I’d always pictured did not exist.
    I looked around that first day and saw charm and more charm: the candles everywhere, the cabinet full of board games, the laundry line out back with white sheets blowing in the wind. I was so charmed, in fact, that I did not notice the things that weremissing. Things like a clothes dryer. A dishwasher. A cordless phone. A microwave. Things I was so used to—that were such a given —that long after I knew for certain they weren’t there, I’d still continue to look for them.
    It was hard not to feel giddy about this place as our new home, though the sleeping arrangements made me a little nervous. Jean’s room was upstairs, and so was the guest room, where the kids would sleep.
    “They’re going to sleep together in the same bed?” I asked. “Won’t they keep each other awake?”
    “Nah,” Jean said. “They’ll sleep better that way.”
    “But where will I be?”
    “You’re downstairs,” Jean said, leading the way back down a hallway to a small room with its own bath and a door that led out to a patio facing the woods.
    “This used to be Frank’s office,” Jean said, and pointed out that her own office was next to it. “I figured that after two years of living with my sister, you could probably use a room of your own.”
    “The thing is,” I said as politely as possible, “it’s kind of far away from the kids.”
    “I can keep an eye on them,” Jean said.
    I wasn’t used to anyone but me doing anything for the kids. My mother had never offered to babysit, or take them to the park, or handle bedtime, and I would have refused even if she had. In three years of doing it all myself, I had come to believe that I was the only person who could possibly get it done, anyway.
    “They’re not great sleepers,” I said. “Tank still gets up almost every night.”
    “Probably time he stopped doing that,” Jean said.
    I nodded and tried not to look irritated. Yes, of course it was time he stopped doing that. “Nothing works,” I said. “I’ve tried everything.”
    Jean patted me on the shoulder. “You haven’t tried sleeping downstairs in Frank’s old office.”
    “True,” I said.
    I wanted her to offer me her room, right next to the kids. It seemed like the only sensible arrangement. But she did not.
    I could already see the disaster ahead. After five years, I had the system down with Tank. Getting him back to sleep when he woke up meant getting him quickly, before he woke up fully. If you waited or messed around at all, he could be up for hours.
    Abdicating my nighttime duties seemed both impossible and irresponsible. Still, who was I to tell Jean what to do in her own house?
    She walked me next door to a similar room. “And this is where I see my clients,” Jean said.
    “Your clients?”
    It turned out Jean was not just a goat farmer but a certified therapist—something my mother had never once mentioned, and I wondered if she even knew. Jean saw clients in the afternoons out of this office—just two or three people a day, she pointed out, but she pretty much had the whole town covered.
    “Everybody needs a little help sometimes,” she said.
    “Tell me about it,” I said, as if I knew exactly what she meant.
    But she would, actually, have to tell me about it—because I didn’t know what she meant. I certainly knew what it was like to need help. I just