BECAUSE a chilly December rain had started to fall, Rachel drove to Winnie’s on the other side of the subdivision rather than walk. When the windshield wipers did nothing to clear her view, she realized the spots blurring her vision were tears. This was ridiculous. Separating was her decision, yet she’d cried every day since she’d told David that they didn’t belong together.

      Despite what logic and intellect told her, on some level she felt she’d failed by not getting pregnant. Why couldn’t her body accomplish what some teenagers achieved unintentionally? When she’d suffered a first-trimester miscarriage last spring, it had devastated her, yet she’d tried to see it as a sign that at least she could conceive. But month after month, hope waned. As did her and David’s tenderness with each other. She could admit that there had been some hormone-triggered mood swings on her part and that she’d been difficult to live with. He’d been patient at first, but no sooner had she lost a child than he began touting adoption as the reasonable solution. His seemingly “just get over it” attitude trivialized everything she’d experienced and made her feel alone even when he was holding her…which was less and less.

      David liked to tell people what course of action they should take, whether it was customers at his family’s store, his newly returned brother or councilmen at town meetings. Almost everyone valued his input; Rachel herself had sought his opinion in the early days of marriage. It had taken her until this year to realize how aloof he could be when people didn’t follow his advice. She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he didn’t view her as an equal partner.

      Tonight was one example of how an endearing habit could turn grating. She’d once found it charming that he would remind her to eat or do little things to take care of her, but lately his suggestions had begun to sound slightly condescending.

      Her heart rate kicked up suddenly, her pulse pounding in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t hear her own thoughts—not an altogether bad thing considering their dark tone. Her vision swam. What the hell? Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, she hurriedly parked at the curb. Then she waited, taking deep breaths.

      Was she being melodramatic, or had she just almost fainted? She’d never passed out in her life. Though her headache remained in full force, her pulse slowed enough that she could walk to Winnie’s front door and ring the bell without worrying that she looked like a deranged escapee from the nearest hospital.

      Winnie Brisbane, receptionist for the town veterinarian, was one of the softest-hearted people in the county. Her two lab mixes had been with her for years; a three-legged cat named Arpeggio and a lop-eared rabbit were more recent additions. Winnie had been negotiating with local pet-sitter Brenna Pierce to care for the menagerie when she’d found an abandoned puppy in a November storm. Though she’d placed a poster in the vet’s office, most people were too preoccupied with approaching holiday chaos to take on a gangly puppy with a nervous bladder and no obedience training. By Thanksgiving, Winnie had named the mutt Hildie.

      Short of Winnie canceling the cruise she and her cousins had been planning for over a year, having someone house-sit seemed the only sensible solution. Brenna’s client schedule was too full for the constant care a puppy required, not to mention how much the extra professional visits would stretch Winnie’s modest budget. She’d laughingly told Rachel that she’d blown this year’s mad money on cruise wear and was making up for it with peanut-butter-sandwich lunches and macaroni-and-cheese dinners.

      “The dogs are officially eating better than I am,” she’d admitted when Rachel offered to puppy-sit.

      As Winnie ushered her into the house, Rachel had a twinge of guilt over the woman’s outpouring of gratitude. Though there was no good way to explain it to sweet-natured, freckle-faced Winnie, who blushed when David so much as smiled, Rachel had taken the house-sitting gig for selfish reasons. Tonight it had hit home how impossible it was for her to be under the same roof with her husband and not just because their exchanges deteriorated into sniping or unproductive regrets.

      When he’d walked into the kitchen earlier, she’d been overwhelmed, out of the blue, by the sandalwood scent of his shampoo. Her sense of smell seemed abnormally strong, maybe because of the headache. She’d read about people with migraines having heightened sensitivities. Whatever the cause, she’d had a nearly visceral memory of him washing her hair once, the feel of his hands across her scalp, the rich lather of the shampoo, his soapy skin sliding against hers as they leaned together for a kiss, the water sluicing over both their bodies.

      “Rachel? Are you okay?”

      Good heavens, she’d completely forgotten about Winnie sitting across the table, summarizing pet routines that were written in a spiral notebook.

      “Sorry.” Rachel swallowed. “I got a little…overheated for a moment. Can I trouble you for a glass of water?”

      Winnie made a sympathetic noise. “Those medications, I expect.”

      One of the positives of living in a small town was that people cared—when they asked how you were doing, they wanted an honest answer, not a rote “fine, thanks.” Susan Waide, strongly in favor of becoming a grandmother, had asked for prayer support among her friends at church on David and Rachel’s behalf. The OB’s office staff knew Rachel by name and were all pulling for her. Sometimes, having everyone within shouting distance knowing the details of her life and cheering her on was nice.

      This was not one of those times.

      So she kept it to herself that she wasn’t even taking the drugs anymore; she’d emptied her last prescription just prior to Halloween. The doctors had warned then that potential long-term dangers of the hormones were starting to outweigh the possibility of conception. They’d broached the subject of in vitro procedures, but she’d decided against it pretty early in the discussion process. It was expensive, offered no guarantees, and frankly, her relationship with David had cooled so much by then that she wondered if it would be fair to bring a baby into their home.

      Home. Glad Winnie stood at the sink with her back turned, Rachel surreptitiously wiped away tears. When David had surprised her late in their engagement with the key to the brick house two streets over, she’d thought it was her dream home. Now it stood as a museum of their disappointments and mistakes.

      The sooner I get out of that house, the better. She found herself reciting the mantra several times a day. She just wished she could convince herself it was true.