She lay still for a while, hands behind her head, watching the sunlight strengthen through the flimsy curtain, her mind stumbling over a confusion of images drawn from her work and her marriage. She was unhappy about both, in oddly similar ways. There was too much happening under the surface, unstated and only dimly perceived, brewing up a turmoil that she should be dealing with and could not. Poor Charisma and her cut throat. Poor Brian, whom she both loved and liked yet who once again found himself playing second fiddle to her career. This move was to benefit her career. He’d taken a set-back in his own to accommodate it: he’d headed the art department at his last school, might have to wait some time for a similar chance at Castle High. But she’d come down here with her horse and a few other treasures, and left him to do everything else alone. She didn’t know what else she could have done, but perhaps that was no answer. Perhaps it was in failing to see the alternatives that she was at fault.
