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they were first married. And so much more.
    When she was done, it looked as if no one had ever loved in the house, and when there were no more things to stuff into boxes and hide away, Sia did what no one ever thought she’d do. She took down every list she and Jackson had ever made together, including the wee little one they’d penned on a bar napkin the night Jackson had proposed . . . the one that listed the top 7 dates they’d had during their courtship.
    â€œAre you nuts?” Jilly had asked when it came down. “Have you lost your f’ing mind?”
    Sia hadn’t answered. She just reached up and took down the wall-sized list that listed all the trips she and Jackson had taken in their first year of marriage, and then the one he’d written for her twenty-seventh birthday that listed the fifteen things he loved most about her. This was her favorite list, the first one he’d made all by himself:
burps like a trucker
believes in invisible things like fairies, ghosts, hope, and God
doesn’t share her pens
says
fuck
more than me
cooks awesome curry
shushes me when she’s writing
prefers hiking boots to high heels
prefers bare feet to hiking boots
talks to herself (loudly)
uses words like
extirpate
drinks WAY too much coffee
doesn’t get her eyebrows waxed
snorts when she laughs
loves Jilly and Gumper like mad
loves me
    â€œI don’t snort when I laugh,” Sia said.
    â€œOh, yes, you do.”
    â€œDo not.”
    â€œDo, too. I’ll prove it.” He pinned her arms behind her with one hand and tickled her with the other until she snorted. “See?” he said.
    â€œPower of suggestion,” she said.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Finally, when it seemed there was nothing else to close, Sia closed herself. She stuffed her wounded, throbbing heart into a small steel contraption that looked something like a birdcage she’d once seen at a garage sale but that she’d considered too inhospitable for a living thing. The thin gray bars were set so close together that nothing bigger than the chirp of a bird could sneak in or slip out. It wasn’t an easy task, jamming her heart in there, and even when she’d managed to get the whole thing in, bits and pieces squeezed back out through those narrow spaces between the bars, like bits of a fat lady’s foot squeezing out of the sides of a too-small pair of strappy sandals. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
    After that—exhausted, tormented, and woefully brokenhearted—Sia lay down and refused to get up again—except, as she put it, to piss and shit.
    She even banished M from the house.
    â€œYou’re banishing your mother?” Jilly said. “You can’t banish M.”
    Sia rested her hand over her heart. “I can’t take it, Jil. It’s too much when she’s close. She can come in when Jackson gets back,” Sia said. “Now leave me alone.”

CHAPTER 7
    â€œYou found a what?” Jilly asked after Sia explained her discovery on the beach.
    â€œA man,” Sia answered.
    â€œWhat kind of a man?”
    â€œA silent man.”
    â€œWhat do you mean . . . silent?”
    â€œHe doesn’t talk.”
    â€œWhere is he?”
    â€œIn the kitchen.”
    â€œThere’s a silent man in your kitchen?” Jilly stood.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou brought a strange, silent man from the beach into your house?”
    â€œI didn’t say
strange
.”
    â€œYou didn’t have to.”
    Long pause.
    â€œAre you nuts, Sia?”
    â€œOh, be quiet. He’s harmless.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? What century are you living in? You can’t tote men you don’t know into your house. Even I don’t do that.”
    â€œIt’s my house. I can do what I want.”
    â€œOf course you
can
, but it’s stupid.”
    â€œAre you done?”
    â€œI guess so, since the guy’s already