It was a Thursday.
Not a special Thursday. Not a Thursday she had circled on any calendar. Just an ordinary midweek afternoon in the third week of May, with the windows open onto the cobbled street and the smell of someone two doors down baking bread, and the church bells ringing four somewhere over the rooftops, and a soft breeze stirring the gauze curtain in the side room.
Erin was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for supper.
Through the half-open door of the side room she could hear them — the low warm rumble of Corin's voice, the high breathy giggles of her son, the soft thump-thump-thump of small feet kicking in delight against a grown man's chest.
She had stopped pretending, in the last week, that she did not listen.
She had stopped pretending a lot of things, in the last week.
