Indeed, before that hot July, if Eliza were to think of Nadine at all, it was to observe how very dull the younger woman was and to marvel at the apparent enthusiasm with which her sister-in-law seemed to embrace those duties of motherhood that she herself had found so mind-numbingly tedious in the years preceding her divorce from her first husband (when her daughter Jenny, an only child, was still young) – the endless chauffeuring, the cheerful volunteering. Admittedly Eliza’s was a marvel edged with lacy disdain. "I admire her, Roger. Really, I do," she assured her husband now. "But, for God’s sake, she’s a Beaver Mom!"

They were washing up in their very small galley kitchen, getting in one another’s way. Ever since they had sold their monster home in Hunter’s Green two years before and bought the exclusive downtown condo, they seemed to find themselves locked in a never-ending series of nerve-shredding near misses – the size of their previous home had led them over time to develop a concept of personal space usually found only on the Prairies. Friends and colleagues were aghast. "After fifteen years of marriage, you need to be able to get away from each other!" they wailed. "Different wings, at the very least!" But Roger and Eliza liked the urban compactness of the new place, the tall windows looking out into an enclosed courtyard and high ceilings . . . and the fact that the condo was sufficiently small that no one ever wanted to visit for long.

"And what’s wrong with being a Beaver Mom?" Roger stood up for his sister now. "For God’s sake, give me that goblet. Didn’t your mother teach you not to put crystal in the dishwasher?"

Right away Eliza knew that the subject of his sister was a minefield she would have to dance lightly through. Roger did not tolerate criticism of his family well – implied or overt – and over the course of their marriage, he had become altogether too adept at identifying the current of condescension that ran quick and cold through her conversation. She hardly got away with a thing anymore.

"You’re being snobby, Eliza," he continued, wresting the goblet from her. "Some women like children!"

"You can like children and still have a life of your own!" Eliza defended herself, dropping to her knees and rummaging noisily in the drawer underneath the stove where she kept the broiler pan and assorted baking tins. After all, she had a child, a twenty-four-year-old daughter who was just finishing up a Master’s degree at UBC. Of course Eliza’s ex had raised Jenny from the age of nine, but that was so the little girl could continue to live in Vancouver. It was what the child had wanted – not to leave her friends or her school. (It was also what Eliza had wanted, although she would never have admitted this. Jenny had been a stubborn child, intractable; she and Eliza had wrangled constantly and, more often than not, Jenny had won by sheer force of will. Eliza had found motherhood very trying and was glad to walk away from it.)

As for Roger and Eliza, they had had no children together. Roger had hinted at starting a family early on in their relationship, but Eliza was not going to make that mistake again.

"Has it ever occurred to you that, if Nadine didn’t like her life, she wouldn’t have chosen it?" Roger asked now.

"Oh!" said Eliza with feigned brightness, standing and clanging lids onto pots. "Do people choose their lives? I don’t seem to remember choosing mine. I just . . . I don’t know . . . stumbled across it and fell in and haven’t quite managed to haul myself out yet."

Roger shook his head and passed his hand over his rapidly eroding hairline. "You’re a complicated piece of machinery, Eliza," he told her. "Nadine is more . . . well . . . simple . . ."

Of course, this turned out to be not entirely the case.

• • •