ADAM: Jesus Christ.
RACHEL: What? Too much? Worse than finding out your husband is in love with a seventeen-year-old girl? Having his cake and eating it, his sweet little seventeen-year-old cake and his dried out forty-two-year-old cake. All the cake, all for him. Man, I hope you choke on it.
ADAM: I wish you would listen for a minute. Let me explain. Nothing happened. Yes, I feel something for her. Yes, I’m sorting it out. But it’s not like you’re making it out to be. We can talk about this.
RACHEL: What is there to talk about? You think you’re in love with a seventeen-year-old girl. You should be talking to a prosecutor, not to me.
ADAM: I didn’t touch her. And she’s almost eighteen.
RACHEL: Oh, eighteen. (Laughs.) Well, okay, then.
ADAM: Rachel, please. Please. I’m sorry. I never meant for you to find out this way.
RACHEL: You never meant for me to find out, period.
ADAM: No. I never meant for it to happen. This is—I don’t know what this is.
RACHEL: Is this about your mother?
ADAM: No. Jesus. No, of course not. Why would you ask that? Don’t be ridiculous.
RACHEL: It’s not ridiculous. You never—
ADAM: This has nothing to do with her. You don’t know anything about her.
RACHEL: Well, that’s true.
ADAM: This is not about her.
RACHEL: Can you hear yourself? Poor Adam—
ADAM: Shut up, Rachel. Leave it alone.
RACHEL: Don’t you dare tell me to shut up.
ADAM: I’m sorry. Jesus. I’m not—I didn’t plan this. I swear, I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.
RACHEL: Like the birds.
ADAM: What birds?
RACHEL (pointing at back window): They used to smack into the glass before we put the glaze on. Flying along, everything clear as a bell, and then bam. Lights out.
ADAM: What are you talking about?
RACHEL: Nothing. None of your business. You’re pathetic. Seventeen years old. Get out, Adam. Go. Leave your things. I don’t want to see you here again.
(ADAM exits. RACHEL stands up. She holds edge of table, looking out window.) (Lights out. End scene.)
Rachel blinked at the dining table, at the sweating bottle of wine. She was standing up, out of her chair. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the edge of the wood. She saw herself sitting at this table eighteen years ago, writing that poisoned letter in the heat of the moment. Dear Sycamore Friends: I write to tell you some news. Adam and I are no longer living together as a married couple since he has decided he is in love with an underage girl. I will be filing for divorce and returning to my maiden name. Sincerely, Rachel Fischer. She saw herself flipping through her address book and the phone book, emptying a box of envelopes, fueled with vengeance instead of thinking of her daughter weeping in her room, of her daughter’s best friend up the street, huddled in her own bed. She saw herself scratching and scratching and scratching through his name on the mailing labels. She tasted the too-sweet paste of the stamps.
Mama, are you back yet?
I’m at the front door. I’m inside the front door. Boo.
The timer on the oven dinged, and she smelled smoke. She called, “Hugh!” She turned off the oven and pulled out the lasagna, which was bubbling and crisp around the edges. Where was he? She thought, Oh. I’ve pushed him away, too. She ran to their bedroom, pulling open the closet. She let out a pent-up breath. All his clothes and shoes were there. The suitcases, still there. Unlike that day when she’d ripped every last piece of Adam’s clothing from the closet and thrown it on the lawn. When she’d shoved Frances Barnes’s exquisite paintings out the attic window, watching them plummet onto the driveway like shot geese. She saw herself as she must have looked, screaming and wild-haired, an actress chewing the scenery in a B movie. She saw Adam on his knees, begging Dani, Please, please, please. She remembered thinking, Beg me to forgive you. Beg me, knowing somewhere in her deepest heart she might have. But he never had.
The kitchen smoke alarm started to blare. She climbed on a chair and yanked at it. She couldn’t get the battery out, so she pulled the entire disc off and threw it to the floor. The plastic shattered across the tile. She turned on the ceiling fan and slid open the glass door to the deck, fanning at the smoke.
“Rachel!” Hugh called.
Rachel stepped out onto the deck. Hugh stood in the almost dark yard near the back fence, holding a glass of wine and a flashlight. He flashed it at her.
“There you are,” she said. “Have you been here the whole time?”
“Sure. I was waiting for you. I saw movement, and I thought something was digging out here by the fence.” He shone the beam at a patch of dirt in the corner. “But come here and see. Oh, the lasagna!”
“I got it.” She walked over to him. “I’m sorry I was late. I really am.”
“It’s okay.” He smiled and waved her closer. “Come see.”
He pointed the light near the base of the velvet mesquite, where dried grass and weeds grew dense beneath the low bushy limbs. “There.”
She heard the alarm call—pit pit pit pit—as she saw the nest in the brush. Gambel’s quail. A covey, a female and her young brood. The male was somewhere in the branches.
“I’m surprised they’re on the ground,” he said.
“They like the ground. They nest in low brush. They’re good at hiding,” she said, remembering it was Dani who’d taught her that.
“Isn’t that dangerous for them?”
“They can fly if they need to.” Low flyers, quail. Big birds. It always surprised her to see them take flight, their stout bodies lifting, surprisingly swift and graceful once they got going.
The female made a distress sound, and Rachel touched Hugh’s hand. “Turn off the light. We’re making them nervous.”
He did, and they stood in the dying light of the day. She turned and faced the house. The kitchen and dining room were illuminated, and through the glass she could see everything: the table, the wine, the broken fire alarm scattered on the floor, the lasagna cooling on the stove. Dinner. She saw her old self that old night, staring down at the ruined pie, addressing envelopes, scratching, scratching. She saw her own girl, retching on the carpet as her life fell apart. Her daughter’s beautiful, sad, and unforgiving face as her father kneeled before her, begging. She saw Maud staring out her window at home, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Rachel touched Hugh’s arm. “I need to call Dani,” she said. “And Maud.”
“Sure.” He put his hand on her back. “Let’s go in.”
She looked at his face. Her young, kind, neurotic husband. He knew that past, of course, but they hadn’t spoken of it in a while.
She pointed at the house. “What do you see when you look at that window?”
He frowned down at her and then turned toward the glass. “At, or through?”
“Both,” she said.
He tilted his head. “Is this a test?”
She laughed. “No test.”
“I don’t know. Glass, I guess. Home.” He put his arm around her. “Like coming home.”