Karen Shepard is a Chinese-American born and raised in New York City. Her second novel, The Bad Boy's Wife,

© St. Martin's

will be published by St. Martin’s in July. She is also the author of the novel An Empire of Women.

© Berkley Publishing Group

Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Bomb, Southwest Review and Mississippi Review, among others. Her work has twice received an Honorable Mention in the Best American series, and has been featured as part of NPR and Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts Series.

She teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts where she lives with her husband, novelist Jim Shepard, their three children, and their one very strange dog.

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Karen Shepard

It was Memorial Day, and Hannah had an almost three-year-old Mattie in the backpack because Cole had gone to pick up their summer help at the airport, after just barely finishing with the roof work on the barn apartment where the boys were staying. For the last two days, she'd been trying to paint floors and walls, rescreen windows, and get the refrigerator to work, all with a baby too big to carry around this way on her back.

Mattie had been good about it. With a toy or two to hold back there, she was fine, only occasionally shifting her weight too fast and throwing her kneeling or bent-over mother off balance. And even then, if Hannah told her to stop, she usually did.

While she was waiting, she was dragging magnets around, trying to get the last of the roofing tacks and nails Cole had strewn around outside the barn. Pete, their Lab-Beagle mix, was galumphing around in front of her, trying to beat her to the nails. He put them in his mouth and spit them out. He grabbed for the ones at the ends of the magnet. He was three, but still seemed like a puppy.

To keep Mattie amused, she sang any song she could remember, from "Twinkle, Twinkle" to "Rosalita" to a nursery rhyme her mother used to sing her: "Clap hands, clap hands until Daddy comes home, because Daddy's got money and Mommy's got none."

Donna, her best friend, had told her it was awful and to quit singing it. Donna was into progressive parenting. She'd had her daughter, Celia, six months before Mattie, and that had given her status as The Expert. Of course, Donna's husband, Tommy, had just left her for one of Celia's babysitters and they were on their way to a divorce, so Hannah figured she wasn't The Expert in everything.

Mattie sang along and reached unsuccessfully for the magnet Hannah was using.

When Cole pulled up, there were the two Australians in the back, and in the front a red-haired girl no one had told Hannah to expect. Mattie squealed and called her father's name in a clear and happy voice. It always surprised Hannah to hear it, as if she'd thought she was going to be the only person calling out his name for the rest of their lives.

He came over and picked Mattie out of the pack. He kissed Hannah on the ear and whispered, "Be nice. I'll explain."

He was the kind of guy who could get off an airplane with three or four "good people" he'd met on the trip. She had lost track of the number of dinners and drinks she'd served, the numbers of beds she'd made for people whose names she couldn't have remembered with a gun to her head. He was so much better at talking to strangers. It was one of the ways that they were a good match. She saw the number of beautiful women who were "good people" as proof of what a catch he was. They'd been together fifteen years now; they had Mattie; they were happy.

Georgia moved like she was walking underwater with something delicate balanced on her head, and Hannah couldn't get over her hair. It was dark red and curly and came all the way down her back, even in the braid she'd tied it into. Hannah was always growing her hair out. Next to Georgia, she was the girl with the wrong dress. The one who wore macaroni necklaces made by her children.

Cole threw a polo ball for Pete into the darkness of the barn, and everyone else followed the dog, and Georgia stepped up to Hannah. "Hey," she said in the strongest Virginia accent Hannah had heard since she'd gone to college out there. "Nice to see you." She put out a freckled hand.

"Hey," Hannah said, offering her own, smaller, sweatier one. It made her feel cooler just to be touching Georgia.

"I'm with the blond one," Georgia said.

Hannah laughed. "So am I," she said. "The other one," she added.

"Yeah," Georgia said.

The summer boys had towed girlfriends along with them before. The boys were from Australia or New Zealand, Ireland or the wrong side of the tracks of Louisville. They were the youngest sons of mothers who'd raised ten children. They were on the short ends of their fathers' favors. They were the polite kind of horsemen. They washed for dinner and ate with their hats in their laps or under their chairs, and they rose to say thank you and hello. They watched Cole like true apprentices, learning from everything. Not only the way he rubbed the cheek of a horse, but the way he swung his daughter into his lap, and the way he did or didn't speak to his wife. He liked to play with their attentions, leaking rumors about himself until they couldn't tell his lies from his confessions.

The girls who came with them were always smart and pretty, and usually rich, and all gone by the end of June.

*

Georgia was smart and pretty and rich. And Georgia was still there in August.

First, she was going to do temp work, but never seemed to get around to the application. Then she was going to help out in the barn, but decided she was sick of horses after years on the show jumping circuit as a teenager. She was twenty-five; it was time to be a grown-up, not a groom.

Twenty-five to Hannah seemed a time warp away.

She wanted to offer helpful suggestions, but every time she looked at the woman, trying to imagine what she'd be good at, or happy at, she came up empty. The one or two times Georgia had offered to lend a hand with dinner, it had taken twice as long. Another time, Hannah had said she'd pay her for a couple hours of gardening and had put her to work spreading mulch. Georgia had seemed enthusiastic enough, but after one or two trips from the mulch pile to the flowerbeds, she'd wandered off, leaving the pitchfork leaning politely against the half-full wheelbarrow.

Hannah had told Cole about all this, and he'd shrugged and said not to be too hard on her, she was probably used to a pretty different life than the one they could offer her here, and damn, wasn't she a looker? Hannah had played the part of the Offended Wife, but she'd wanted to agree: Georgia was a looker, and it sent a little charge through her to know that she and Cole thought the same thing.

The Virginia Chandlers, he'd told her that night in bed.

Then Georgia was supposed to work for one of the guys on the polo team, Ron Bartlett, who owned Shucker's Oyster Bar in town. Cole had called him Rocket Ron since he'd shown up shirtless and in khakis and tasseled loafers for practice one day.

But she'd talked it over with Angus, her blond, and with Cole and Hannah, and had worked out that the gas and half hour commute into Louisville kind of cut into the job's appeal.

"I mean," she said one night in their living room, a leg slung over Angus's thigh, "my time's worth something, right?"

"Absolutely," Angus said, tracing tiny circles around her knee.

Hannah watched her husband watching the boy's finger. A wave of shivers went through her.

She turned back to Duplos on the floor with Mattie. Pete was sprawled next to them, chewing on one of his own paws. Mattie's hands still looked like they had when she was an infant, as if someone had inflated them.

"You could work for Hannah," Cole said, getting up to put on K.D. Lang, even though she was gay. She wouldn't be, he liked to say, if she ever met me.

"I could?" Georgia said.

"She could?" Hannah said.

He came and sat behind Hannah on the floor. He tossed a Duplo kitty towards Mattie. "Titty," she said. She couldn't say her K's. After the cat had had kittens she'd asked Georgia if she wanted to see her mama's titties. Georgia had laughed and said, No. No, thank you.

Cole put his hand under Hannah's tank top and squeezed her breast. "Mama's titty," he said. Georgia looked at them as if this was the kind of thing she'd come to expect from them both.

When they were first dating, he had liked to walk behind Hannah up stairs and put his hand between her legs.

Angus was blushing. Georgia was still considering them.

Cole laughed at them all and rolled onto his back, his hands behind his head, his long legs crossed at the ankle. "Hannah needs help around the house," he said. "With Mattie and meals, and there's all those boxes in the basement she's been meaning to unpack for about the last ten years."

Hannah said, "That's true." She didn't know how she felt about Georgia being the one to help. She didn't know what she could imagine Georgia doing. Something cool and slow moving. Something from another life.

Cole said, "We'll pay you $250 a week, same as Angus." He kicked Georgia's foot. "Not much for a Chandler, but better than having Rocket Ron breathe on you every night."

"Yeah," Angus said as if waking from a deep sleep.

Georgia didn't say anything, but it was settled, as if Cole was a fisherman who'd just thrown his net.

*

But Georgia continued to lose interest in what she was doing; Hannah would give her instructions to do something like get the recyclables ready for a trip to the dump, and four hours later, she'd find Georgia sitting in the garage reading newspapers six months old. She thought Georgia might be more interested in preparing meals if she could fancy things up a little, so she presented her with a pile of wedding present cookbooks that had barely been cracked, and suggested they try something new and different. Georgia flipped the cover of the book at the top of the pile back and forth and shrugged. "Whatever you want," she said.

Hannah suggested working on Presentation.

She got some magazines for ideas and marked pages. Tiny bundles of fresh flowers in tiny glass vases. Rose petals across the tablecloth. Napkin rings. Finger bowls and sorbet between courses. Georgia seemed willing to try anything. Angus was baffled. Cole made jokes. He asked if they wanted to be left alone.

"Hey," Georgia said. "This wasn't my idea." She waved a hand in Hannah's general direction. "Talk to your wife."

In private, he asked who the hell was paying for all this. She told him not to worry; she had the budget under control. She didn't tell him Georgia charged the bigger grocery bills to her parents' credit card.

Everything about Georgia said, Just passing through, but Hannah still wanted her there.

She hadn't realized how much she'd missed adult conversation since Mattie had been born.

They talked boys. They talked parents. They talked Mattie. They put on music and Hannah made up dances. So what if Georgia was just passing time; she was willing to pass the time here, and that was enough. It was more than enough: it made Hannah's insides take quick little lurches, as if she'd been running down the stairs and missed the last one.

When Georgia stumbled on Cole's pile of Playboys, Hannah suggested they write their own Playmate profiles. Ambitions. Turn-Ons. Favorite Quote. Georgia's was from Voltaire, she said: "Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly." "No offense," she said.

When she left at night, the house filled with space, and Hannah rushed through her nighttime routine to trick the morning into hurrying up and getting there.

Sometimes she would ask Georgia to watch Mattie just so she could spy on them playing. Georgia bought face paints and painted dragons and unicorns on her cheeks, and when Mattie wanted a turn, Georgia closed her eyes and held her own face still for the out of control brushstrokes of a toddler. It was a stillness Georgia had never displayed for Hannah.

Once, when Mattie wanted to paint Georgia's whole body, Georgia lay on the floor for her and took off her shirt. Mattie painted all she knew how to paint-baby faces and pigs-over Georgia's back and stomach and breasts. Hannah watched from the kitchen doorway, wanting to be in there with them, but unable to bring herself to move. She leaned her forehead against the doorframe, breathing around her cowardice.

Cole said he was glad things were working out, and wished he could say the same for the dimwits from down under. Donna wanted to know if Hannah had forgotten that Tommy was living with a woman who was also really good with children?

Hannah didn't care who she sacrificed for the sake of her new friendship. It was like what Cole had said about training racehorses. You picked a rabbit, a slower horse you always put against the one you had the higher hopes for, breaking her heart over and over for the sake of the one you thought was going to be the winner.

From nine to after dinner five days a week, she had a companion. The hours she used to spend waiting for Cole to get back from the barn, the polo field, a horse-buying trip.

She felt like she felt about Cole: all the ways in which she wasn't the focus of his attention made the moments when she was that much more electric. Around nearly any moment there was the warmth of being chosen, the promise of what might be.

*

One Thursday, Mattie was taking her afternoon nap, and Hannah and Georgia were trying to fix the screen on the screened-in porch. There were a bunch of small tears in several of the panels, and Hannah was trying to avoid having to replace them. Georgia said trying to fix it was dumb. She'd pay for the new panels. That first time in the grocery store, Hannah had hesitated long enough for Georgia to push her gently aside and offer her own credit card. Hannah had protested, but Georgia had put her hand up and smiled the smile she used with deliverymen and waitresses. Hannah had barely managed a thank you in the parking lot.

This time, Hannah had a plan. She put Georgia on the inside and she went outside, on the other side of the screen. Pete chased a bee behind her, caught it, and spit it out, rubbing his muzzle with his paw.

Georgia sat cross-legged on the indoor-outdoor carpet and regarded her.

Hannah pulled a needle and a spool of gray thread from her pocket.

Georgia said, "That's your plan?"

"Shut up," Hannah said, frowning as she tried to thread the needle.

Georgia tipped back onto her elbows and stared up at the ceiling fan. "Think of someone you admire," she said. "And list their traits that appeal to you."

Hannah said it sounded like one of the exercises from Donna's Get Over Your Husband Betraying You books.

"It works," Georgia said. "You make as specific a list as possible, and that increases your chances of finding your perfect match."

Georgia said it like she wasn't a bit worried about finding her perfect match.

"I'm married," Hannah said, closing one eye to thread the needle.

"Yeah, well, I'm not," Georgia said. She said she was going to get paper and pencil. The screen door to the kitchen banged shut behind her.

Hannah took the needle and pricked the tip of her index finger. She squeezed, and a drop of blood beaded, alive-looking.

She indexed Cole's admirable traits. How much he touched her. She'd seen on nature shows how all kinds of mammals caressed. He loved taking inventory of the places he said got shortchanged in their lovemaking.

She wished he touched other people less. He hugged male friends. He put his arm around women at parties. Even in polo: he was always coming up alongside the only woman player at the club and poking her lightly with his mallet. He handled Mattie like he was rubbing a dog's face. He wished people could be more like animals. He gave Georgia the kind of reactions he gave almost no one.

Georgia was back with a yellow pad and a silver pen. "Number One," she said. "His butt has to look good in jeans." She wrote as she talked.

"That's not a trait," Hannah said. She was still pricking her fingers, one by one. Pete sniffed them and then moved away towards the woods.

When Cole wanted oral sex, he said he thought the dog could use a walk. When he was only after sex, he'd say, "Hey, Hannah Banana, there's no cover charge tonight at the Club Zucchini."

Hannah laughed softly. Poor Donna, she thought.

"What?" Georgia asked.

Hannah told her.

"What's wrong with you guys?" Georgia said.

Hannah was pretty sure she was joking.

"What are you doing?" Georgia asked. She was already on to the next thing. She was looking at Hannah's bleeding fingertips.

Hannah laughed and wiped her hand on the grass. "Nothing," she said. "Just playing." She stood up, spooling the gray thread back. She announced she was going to get stronger thread.

On the way back she looked over Georgia's shoulder at the list. Sense of humor, kind eyes, strong hands. She was surprised at the ordinariness.

She said, "I read a story once where the guy took a needle and thread and sewed the name of the girl he loved across his fingers." She put her own fingers to her mouth, brushing them back and forth like her lips were sunburned. "Whatever that trait is, that's what I want," she said.

Georgia said, "You would," and it made Hannah want to hole up there, just the two of them, eating fancy, playing with Mattie, sewing their names beneath their skin.

*

She found some thick black thread, a larger needle, and the rest of Cole's pot. Every night for as long as she'd known him, he'd started with beer, moved to whiskey and ended with pot. If he'd left the bong by his bed, he'd start the morning with a hit as well. At night, she sometimes joined him, mostly she didn't. It aggravated her asthma, and all it made her feel was sleepy. It didn't put her in the mood. When she complained that all she could do when she was high and they made love was lie there, he said he didn't mind.

The four of them had gotten high a couple of times together. It made Angus look kinder and more harmless than usual. It made Georgia laugh genuine laughs, and made Hannah laugh, and that made Cole suggest threesomes.

"Threesomes?" Angus had said. "Where d'ya get three?"

Cole had taken them both into a hug, rolling his face between their necks. Georgia's expression had been blank, as if she were waiting for Cole to pass, like the weather. Then it wasn't. Then it made Hannah want to take Georgia by the shoulders, get close to her face and make her understand: she wasn't like Cole.

Years ago, they'd been on the road with the horses and Tommy and Donna, and the men had convinced the women to swap for the night. It had been a night like their nights with Angus and Georgia, full of drinking and smoking, and Hannah feeling invisible, and the new couples had gone into their motel rooms giggling and whispering. Hannah and Tommy had gotten Hannah and Cole's room, and she hadn't been able to keep herself from looking at all of his stuff strewn around. His Resistol, his shaving kit, the leather and silver bracelet he'd forgotten to put back on after his shower.

She and Tommy had tried. They'd sat on the edge of one of the beds and kissed, and he'd touched her breast, but Hannah had felt like she was in the seventh grade. So they'd finished a bottle of Maker's Mark and had played cards until Cole and Donna came pounding on the door.

Cole had come right over to Hannah, taken her in his arms and kissed her. She'd left the whole night behind, like putting a file in a drawer and locking it away. Though sometimes, she took it out.

*

They got stoned, and Hannah threaded the needle, and they put their faces close to the screen and passed the needle back and forth through the tiny squares of the mesh.

The sun dropped behind the trees. Pete came out of the woods. Hannah checked on Mattie, who was awake, but playing quietly in her crib.

The screen looked like the rehabilitation work of an accident victim. Black thread draped on both sides. Georgia sat, still cross-legged, in front of the mess. Hannah sat next to her, their knees touching.

"Well," Georgia finally said. "What can you do?"

Hannah was happy. "We gave it our best shots," she said.

Georgia considered her. "What can you do?" she repeated.

*

Dinner was pasta.

Hannah was in charge of the water.

Mattie was on the kitchen floor stacking nesting blocks into towers and knocking them down. The boys were still at the barn. Hannah could see them through the kitchen window.

They'd gotten a late start, and had Tom Petty cranked on the stereo in the living room, trying to get their still-stoned limbs to move faster.

The phone rang in the middle of all this. "Don't get it," Georgia said.

The boys were heading down to the house; they were shadow puppets against the twilight. The timer for the noodles rang and Hannah set up the colander in the sink.

She took the pot from the stove, Georgia did a little dip and shimmy, they bumped each other, and boiling water and noodles hit the linoleum and splashed up onto her daughter's tiny hand and foot.

Mattie screamed. Hannah shrieked. Cole appeared in the kitchen and took charge, brushing Hannah aside.

"It wasn't her fault," Georgia told him as he soaked Mattie's hand and foot in a bowl of cool water and then wrapped them in gauze.

He picked Mattie up and bundled her into the back of the car.

He wouldn't let Hannah in with them.

Georgia drove her to the hospital. They watched Cole's taillights dip and rise ahead of them. Hannah thought about Mattie's expression. The surprise, and the sureness that her mother would fix it. It was the expression of a childhood dog hit by a car, lying there on his side, his one eye telling her he trusted her and would wait right there until she made everything better.

*

The emergency room doctors had resoaked the burns and rebandaged her, and had given them instructions to take her to their family doctor in two days' time.

Later that night, Georgia had driven her home again, this time in front of Cole's car, with Mattie in the backseat, and had touched her shoulder before going down to Angus and the barn apartment.

Hannah had hovered behind Cole, watching him carry a sedated Mattie to her crib. Later that night, he'd told her she was stupid, and she'd returned, naked, to their bedroom, ready to agree with whatever he wanted to call her, just so she could lie next to him. They'd had sex, which she'd taken as proof that things were better.

*

They put off the boxes in the basement, using Mattie as an excuse. But Hannah wanted to be upstairs, in the sunlight, shorts pulled up high, legs stretched out in front of her, gin and lemonades within arms' reach, Georgia by her side. That was the kind of girl she wanted to be, even more after the accident than before.

But she'd remembered photo albums in some of those boxes somewhere, and wanted Georgia to see them. She liked the idea of Georgia pointing out what a good photographer she could be. See, she could say back, I'm an artist, too.

So they left Mattie with the sitter. Upstairs it was August, and the cool dampness was welcome, like getting to stand in front of the open door of the fridge. Every day since the beginning of the month, she'd gotten up thinking: she leaves in thirty days. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. This morning she'd thought: five.

The day bed positioned under the laundry chute was piled high with dirty clothes. The play area corner was a disaster.

They worked for hours, making piles of things to take upstairs, give away, throw away, repack. Georgia made fun of her high school yearbook photo. She'd been voted Most Likely to Marry a Horse. They unearthed her glass animal collection. Hannah took extra care with the tiny row of ducklings in the family of ducks. "Mattie will like those someday," Georgia said.

Hannah pulled out the shoebox filled with little nothings from her first few months with Cole. Notes. Doodles. A paper cigar band that he'd once slipped on her finger under their boss's dining table.

"What's this?" Georgia asked, holding up a pillowcase.

Hannah blushed and lowered her voice, and said it was the pillowcase from the hotel room where Cole had made her come with his mouth for the first time.

Georgia nodded matter-of-factly, going back to the box.

Georgia pushed the laundry on the day bed aside and dumped the rest of the shoebox out next to it. She sifted through it. "You are a sad, sad case, Hannah Baker Thompson," she said.

Hannah came and sat on the other side of the little pile. "I am not," she said, only half-defensively.

"The guy who won't let you ride in the car to the hospital with your daughter," Georgia said. "The guy who blames you for everything."

Hannah felt tears starting. She'd never said anything about Georgia's dip and shimmy.

She'd be whatever Hannah Georgia wanted. She told her about the night of the accident. Even about the next morning when she'd found hand towels hardened with cum in the back of the closet. She said she didn't know whether they were all from that night or whether he'd been at it for weeks.

Georgia came over and took her face in her hands. Hannah's legs sank into the fabric of the couch like a spill. She had no idea what would come next. Georgia kissed her. For Hannah it was like trying to stare at the sun. She closed her eyes. Georgia lay her back on the daybed and tugged off her shorts. She bent Hannah's legs, and swung them over her shoulders. Things from the shoebox fell onto the floor. Hannah could feel some pressing into her back. Her eyes stayed closed. She wanted Cole to know. She couldn't explain her wishes to herself. Georgia's mouth on her was like sound. It was like water or like love.

When she was finished they kissed for some minutes, tasting each other, and then Georgia pulled back, touching Hannah's cheek with her fingers. "Listen," she said. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea from all this."

Hannah's eyes were still closed. She thought she'd keep them that way.

"I mean," Georgia said, "let's not tell anyone about this." She tossed Hannah's shorts into her lap. "Think of it as a going away present," she said. "For both of us," she added.

And Hannah was not offended or much saddened, because she didn't believe in all that much. Knowledge, she'd already come to believe, wasn't power. Knowing one thing didn't mean you had to learn everything. So days would come one after another and she'd be grateful for what came next, take what she could get, and not ask for more.

© Karen Shepard