Most people are spared that particular mortification.

I was not spared it.

But I have come to think that being caught was a gift, because it taught me something about the stories I tell myself that I do not think I could have learned any gentler way.

Chapter 2 — The Stubborn Sheet

I crossed to the bed, grabbed the elastic corner of the fitted sheet, and gave it a firm, satisfying yank, the first official act of reclaiming my room.

The sheet did not budge.

“Oh, come on, don’t stick now,” I muttered, tugging again.

Somewhere down the hall I could hear my husband, Zachary, moving around the kitchen, the clink of a coffee mug being rinsed, the small domestic sounds of an ordinary Saturday morning finally returned to us.

He had offered, twice, to come help me strip the bed and haul the mattress, and both times I had waved him off, because this was my project.

This was my reclaiming.

I wanted to be the one to peel away the last physical traces of six months of guests and turn this room back into ours, and there is a particular satisfaction in doing that yourself, sheet by sheet, that you cannot get from supervising someone else doing it.

The sheet stuck again, stubbornly, the elastic hooked hard around the corner of the mattress as though it had grown roots there over the months.

I braced my knee against the edge of the bed and pulled.

“Just let go already,” I said under my breath, wrestling with it.