“Stay right here, honey,” I said, and trotted back to the bedroom. I yanked back the top sheet, the fitted sheet, and the mattress pad. Sure enough, the mattress was soaked . . . and, before I knew it, the bottle was in my hands. Take one pill every four to six hours as needed for pain. I popped the lid, shook one pill into my hand, debated for a moment, then added a second, noticing as I did that the bottle was getting light. I’d taken one at five o’clock the night before, after Ellie had thrown a fit because the TiVo had deleted her favorite episode of Team Umizoomi, and then another one at midnight, when I couldn’t fall asleep.

In the bathroom, I scooped a mouthful of water from the sink and swallowed. Immediately, even before the pills were down my throat, I felt a sense of calm come over me, a certainty that I could handle this crisis and whatever others emerged before seven a.m. All will be well, the pills sang as they descended. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

“Here we go,” I said to Ellie. I pulled off my own evening finery—an XXL T-shirt from Franklin & Marshall College and a pair of cotton Hanes Her Way boy shorts, which I’d bought because they covered more real estate than briefs or bikinis. Maybe I could count this as a workout, I thought as I lifted my shrieking daughter and stepped under the spray.

“Too hot! TOO HOT!” Ellie flailed her arms. One fist clipped me underneath my eye. I yelped, then gripped her arms tightly.

“Hold still,” I said. With one hand, I kept her immobilized. With the other, I reached for the Princess body wash, wishing I’d added a third pill, wondering if I would have a chance to see the article before I had to take Ellie to school.

Dave stuck his head into the bathroom. “Did you pick up the dry cleaning?” he yelled over the drumming of the water. I could picture his face, the tightness around his mouth, the expression of disappointment he’d have in place even before I disappointed him.

“Oh, shit.”

Ellie blinked at me through the water. “Mommy, that’s a bad word.”

“Mommy knows.” I raised my voice. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t sigh or complain, even though I knew he wanted to do both. “I guess I’ll get it. Do you want me to pick you up for tonight?” he asked, in a tone of exaggerated patience and goodwill.

“What’s tonight?” The second the words were out of my mouth, I remembered what “tonight” was—Dave’s birthday dinner. I’d made reservations at his favorite restaurant, invited two other couples, picked out and picked up the wine, and ordered the fancy heart monitor he’d asked for, and wrapped it myself.

“It’s Daddy’s birthday,” Ellie said pertly.

“I know that, honey.” I raised my voice so Dave could hear. “I’m sorry. Senior moment.” I was six months older than Dave. In better, pre-baby times, we’d joked about it. He’d call me his “old lady,” or install a flashlight app on my phone so I could read the menu in dimly lit restaurants. Lately, though, the jokes had taken on an unpleasant edge. “I can meet you at Cochon.”

“Fine.” He didn’t exactly slam the bathroom door, but he wasn’t particularly gentle when he closed it, either. I sighed, flipped open the body wash—pink and sparkly, with a cloying scent somewhere between apple blossom and air freshener—and squirted a handful into my palm. I washed Ellie’s hair and body, trying to ignore her kicks and shrieks of “THAT HURTS!” and “IT TICKLES!” and “NOW YOU GOT IT IN MY EYES!” and then washed myself off. I bundled her into a towel, wrapped another towel around my midsection, then scooped her sodden clothes and the soaked bath mat off the floor and tossed them toward the washing machine on my way to Ellie’s bedroom.

I gave Ellie a fresh pair of panties and dumped detergent into the machine. When I turned around, Ellie was still naked, her belly sticking out adorably, frowning at the panties.

“These are not Princess Jasmine.”

“I know, honey. They’re . . .” I squinted at the underwear. “Meredith? From Brave?”

“Not Mere-DITH, Meri-DA.”

“Right. Her.”

“Meridas are for Fridays!”

“Well, you’re going to have to wear Merida today. Or else you can try . . .” I pawed through the laundry basket, producing a pair with a grinning cartoon monkey on the back. “Who is this? Paul Frank?”

“I HATE Paul Frank. Only BOYS like Paul Frank.”

“Ellie. We’re late. Pick one.”

She chewed her thumbnail thoughtfully, before extending her index finger at the first pair. “Eenie . . . meenie . . . miney . . . moe.”

“We don’t have time for this.”

“Catch . . . a . . . tiger . . . by . . . the . . . toe.”

“Ellie.” I bent down so I could look her in the eye. “I didn’t want to tell you this, because I didn’t want to scare you, but the truth is, there is actually a very dangerous monster living in your closet, and he only eats girls without underpants.”

She smiled indulgently. “You are FIBBING.”

“Maybe I am,” I said, tightening my towel, “and maybe I’m not. But if I were you, I’d put on my underwear.”

Back in my bedroom, the wet sheets and comforter were still on the floor. Sighing, I picked them up, ran them to the laundry room, and tried to pull up the Journal on my phone. It was seven o’clock, which gave me thirty minutes to get myself and Ellie dressed, fed, and out the door, and no time at all for a workout. I pulled on my panties and a bra, a pair of leggings, and a dress that was basically an oversized long-sleeved gray tee shirt, and went back to Ellie’s room.

She stared at me, gimlet-eyed, hip cocked, a bored supermodel in a pair of panties with a monkey on the butt. I took the requisite three dresses out of her closet, holding their hangers as I made each one speak. “Hi, Ellie,” I said in my squeaky pretending-to-be-a-dress voice as I wiggled one of the choices in front of her. “I am beautiful purple!”

“Well, I have a tutu!” I squeaked next, shoving the second dress in front of the first one.

“But I am the favorite!” I said, in the persona of dress number three, a yellow-and-orange tie-dyed number that I’d picked up at a craft fair in Vermont, where Dave and I had gone for Columbus Day weekend two Octobers ago. We’d run a race together—well, Dave had run the 10K, and I’d started off the 5K at an ambitious trot, which had slowed to a stroll, the better to enjoy the foliage and the smell of smoke in the air. When no one was looking. I’d tucked ten dollars into my running bra, and when I was sure I was the last person in the race I’d stopped at a stand and bought a cider doughnut. We’d spent the night in a gorgeous old inn, and slept in a four-poster bed set so far off the floor that there was a miniature set of stairs on each side. Dinner had been in a restaurant built in a former gristmill, at a table overlooking a stream—roast duck in a dark cherry sauce, a bottle of red wine so rich and smooth that even I, who enjoyed things like piña coladas, knew it was something special. There’d been cream puffs with chocolate sauce and glasses of port for dessert. The innkeepers had lit a fire in the fireplace in our bedroom, and left out a box of chocolates and a bottle of Champagne. I remember climbing into that high bed, and Dave saying, “Let’s do it like we’re Pilgrims.”

“What’s that mean?”

He gathered me into his arms, kissed my forehead, then each cheek, then my lips, slowly and lingeringly. “You lie there and don’t make any noise, like you’re just trying to endure it.”

“So, the usual.”

“Oh, you,” he said, flashing his white teeth in a grin, sliding his hand up the white lace-trimmed nightgown that I’d bought for the occasion. We made love, and then slept for fourteen hours, our longest stretch since Ellie had joined us, and then we ordered room-service waffles and sausage for breakfast, and made love again. We spent the rest of the day walking around the quaint little town, holding hands, buying maple candies and painted wooden birdhouse.

This had been before the Examiner’s first layoffs, before everyone who’d been eligible for the buyout had been persuaded—or, in some cases, strongly encouraged—to take the money and go. Now, instead of three reporters covering City Hall, there was just one, just Dave. Instead of leaving the house at nine, he left at eight, then seven-thirty, and I rarely saw him home before eight o’clock at night. On weekends he’d be either hunched over his computer or pounding out miles around Kelly Drive. When we were first married, we’d had sex three or four times a week. Post-baby, that dwindled to three or four times a month . . . and that was a good month. Sometimes it felt as if I’d gone to the hospital, given birth, then lifted my head five years later to find that my husband and I were barely speaking, and that sex with him was at the very end of a very long to-do list, instead of something that I actively wanted and missed.

Part of me thought this was normal. Certainly I’d read and overheard plenty about post-baby bed death. I knew that the passion of the early years didn’t last over the length of the union, but lately I’d started to wonder: If we weren’t talking, what was he not telling me? And who might he be talking to? The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers, or his secrets, any more than I wanted him to know mine.

“Mommy? Oh, Mommmm-eeee.” Ellie was wiggling her fingers in front of my face, then trying hard and, so far, without success, to snap them.

“Sorry,” I said.

She pointed at the dresses. “Make them fight!”

“Pick me!” I squeaked, shaking one of the dresses so it looked like it was having a seizure. “No, me!” Using both of my hands and skills that would have impressed a puppeteer, I maneuvered the dresses, making them wrestle and punch. Finally, Ellie pointed at the tie-dyed dress. “I will wear she to school this morning, and she”—an imperious nod toward the purple one—“when I get home for my snack.”