It didn’t help that Guy was alcoholic. Nancy should have been quick to spot that, what with her parents, but Guy threw her off by being functional. He could down four Jack Daniels at lunch and have a productive afternoon. He drove well. He’d never be the sort of father you’d find sleeping in the morning on the dewy front lawn. True, it was unattractive the way the shade came down in his eyes every evening, signaling a likeliness to be stupid and sentimental. That’s when he’d start repeating his reminiscences or ambitions, moist-eyed at least every third night. But after a few months of living together Nancy developed the skill of being somewhere else in the house when Guy got like that, or not responding if she didn’t get away. No: what led her to realize he was a lush was the progression that started with arguments they had some mornings after, when Guy too readily offered to give up booze entirely, followed by her accidental discoveries of hidden bottles, leading to his ceremonial pourings into the kitchen drain, triggering those horrible memories for her, ringing in her skull with the obnoxious familiarity of a car alarm sequence.

The sex dwindled to marital maintenance, the conversations faded, the plans stalled. But Nancy could no more give concrete reasons for falling out of love with Guy than she’d had for falling into it. She didn’t mark the moment any better than one can pinpoint the second when a headache disappears. It must have been weeks, months maybe, before she noticed that she didn’t want to return home after work. She had no place else to go but she just didn’t want to make that last left down her street and into her house. Where at best it would be boring.