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than she had ever been a schoolteacher. She readily gave up her job to be a successful doctor’s wife. Joan had it all; it seemed to Emily, fighting the wave of envy once more.
    At thirty-two, Emily was still young enough to remarry and start a family, she realized with a burst of relief. She and Eddie put off having kids until he got his business off the ground. It never happened. Her husband never had the business savvy to run his own company. As a result, they put off having babies. She felt a knife-like pain in her middle to know the true reason Eddie put off having kids . Stop it! Don’t think of it! Just push it away!
    “We definitely need to paint,” Joan agreed and shook her head. “You would think that being married to a carpenter you would at least have decent kitchen cabinets. These are in a definite need of re-facing. What the hell was Eddie doing all these years?”
    Emily wisely stayed silent. To say her husband wasn’t the most motivated carpenter was obvious in the rundown, shabby interior of their home. He put off plans to re-do the kitchen every year. He talked about building an addition onto their house too. But, it was all talk. Eddie liked to talk about doing things. He talked more and did less every year. Emily was dismayed to realize it was a flaw in her husband she never recognized while he was alive.

Chapter Two
     
    They met when she was a freshman in college at UCLA. Emily had precisely two and a half lovers before she married him. One was an awkward, geeky guy in her dorm that ejaculated as soon as he pulled his penis out of his pants, named Leo. She broke it off when his failure to ejaculate anywhere else but on himself became an issue between them.
    T he other questionable boyfriend was a pothead in town named, John. He worked odd jobs, but dealing pot to college kids was his primary gig. She met him at a party, got stoned for the first time in her life, and allowed him to lure her away on occasion to smoke. Her attraction to John and marijuana fizzled when she caught him with another girl from school one night. The pair didn’t even recall she was standing in his bedroom, witnessing his cheating, before she ran out.
    The half of the two was a random drunk night after a party with some nameless, faceless guy she’d prefer to forget. She recalled only half the experience, dimmed with too much draft beer at a Frat party and her heartbreak over John. She ruled it didn’t count later, unable to recall whether they’d done the deed or not before they passed out.
    Eddie Walker was on the work crew that was renovating several classrooms on campus. She would have liked to say it was love at first sight, but she hardly noticed the handsome, dark-haired construction worker. He came up to her in the student center one day, his brown eyes filled with guarded hope as he introduced himself and sat down.
    Emily wondered what the dirty, scruffy construction worker wanted with her until he asked her out, feeling tongue-tied to respond. Saying no seemed to be one of the hardest things for her to ever do. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, she recalled. To say she looked forward to the date was a joke.
    She dreaded it until the night he picked her up at her dorm, dressed in a pair of khaki Dockers and a nice button-down shirt.  He took her to a movie that night. She couldn’t remember the name of the movie. What she did remember is the way he looked at her then, his intense brown gaze so rapt and filled with interest, she felt universally singled out for the first time in her twenty years of life.
    When was the last time she saw that look from Eddie? Emily couldn’t recall seeing his expression change over the years. It had; replaced with something that no longer resembled what it had before. Eddie was good to her, if not to say, he took much for granted. She could count on him to forget Valentine’s Day, their wedding anniversary, and even her birthday on occasion.
    When did that adoring look di