She always had.

It had simply taken her thirty-odd years, and one broken marriage, to pick it up and use it.

She walked upstairs, turned off the hallway lights, and paused beside the thermostat on the wall.

The house was perfectly comfortable, and she smiled to herself anyway.

People would say, when they told the story, that one hot afternoon in July had cost her a five-year marriage.

But that framing was not quite true, and she knew it, sitting alone in the peaceful dark of a house that was wholly her own.