Her husband watched as whatever he had fallen in love with in her tried and failed to heal. He watched it crust over with the brittle glaze of grief, watched as it formed spots of hardness, cracked and fissured: if he forgot to move the boards from off the new grass her anger could slice him open quickly before it vanished, leaving him bleeding with no weapon to defend himself against. His wife’s tears were secret and hidden from him but he could detect them in the texture of her mare’s mane, in the new soap that never seemed to rinse completely off her thighs. Everything of her was crazed. There was no option but to take her to the women in the white house.