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“Then why didn’t you just sit me down and explain all of that. Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing and let me decide for myself how I felt about it? By hiding it and not talking about it, you basically told me that I wasn’t fit to come to my own conclusions. To feel the way I felt. You took that away from me, and it feels deceptive. Deceiving the person you love is like stripping them of their dignity, Jo. I’m a grown man, and I need to know that the woman I’m married to has my back and will always be up front with me.”

“Bill, I will. I swear.” Jo pulls all the way back from him and walks around Bill so that they’re face to face. “But I’ve been writing for almost a year now, and you never asked to read any of it. It was like you didn’t care.” She looks up at him desperately. “I didn’t ever set out to hide things from you or to do something that would upset you, but I do feel like you had every opportunity to read my work. To ask me what was going on with my stories. I even did a reading at NASA, for God’s sake. Almost all the women you work with have read my stories. I just…I feel bad that you feel bad, but you really pulled away from me. You showed no interest in my writing. Zero.”

“I’ve been busy, Jo.” Bill puts his hands on both of her shoulders and looks deep into her eyes. “We came here with a goal—a big one—and I needed to put as much of my focus on this as I possibly could. That’s why I struggled at first with you taking the volunteer position at the hospital. I needed you to be my partner first and foremost.”

“But Iam.”

“I know you are, but can you see how I felt like you were pulling away from me? How it seemed like you wanted to go off and do your own things rather than focus on the family? And then to take up writing on top of that…”

Jo hears what he’s saying, and she understands the expectations on her as a wife and mother, but she can’t help feeling like Bill is wrong. He’s wrong in thinking that Jo giving her time to the hospital, or staying up late to write and be creative, are ways that she’s pulling away from him and the children. Instead, she sees those as very distinct ways that she’s becomingmorefor them, notless.

Jo drops her gaze as Bill’s hands gently knead her shoulders. “Bill,” she says, shaking her head. Her voice is so low that it’s almost a whisper. “I’m not pulling away from you. I’m just trying to find me. I want to know who I’m supposed to be, and I think doing that will set a wonderful example for the kids—the girls in particular.”

She bites her lower lip and feels the burn of tears, but they aren’t tears of sadness. Instead, Jo feels almost angry that she has to defend herself, that she has to make Bill understand her desire to be her own person. He’s never once had to explain to her why he wants to go to the moon or why he needs to stop at the Black Hole for beers with his coworkers at the end of the day.

When Jo looks up at Bill, he’s watching her with a curious gaze. “You think the girls need to see their mother giving her time away for free at the hospital and writing stories under a pen name?” His tone is gentle, but the sarcasm is sharp and heavy to Jo’s ear.

She takes his words in, holds them, and then lets out her thoughts with her breath. “I do,” she says. “I think they need to see that women have a lot to offer the world. If they both become wives and mothers then that’s wonderful and a blessing to us, but if either of them wants to do something else, something?—“

“Say it, Jo. Something more.”

She shakes her head emphatically. “That wasn’t what I meant, but okay. If they want to do something more, then at least they know it’s possible.”

Bill pulls back even further; he can’t meet her eye. “I never knew you were unhappy with your life. With our life.”

Jo has taken all she can take from him in that moment. She cannot listen to any more from him without speaking her mind.

“You know what? I never knew you were unhappy, either.”

Bill’s eyes flash with fire. “I’m not.”

“Oh? Then why did I drive by The Black Hole and see you outside in the parking lot with Jeanie Florence?” she says in a voice that comes out sounding like an angry, accusatory hiss. “When you turn your affections to another woman, you make a fool out ofme. Out of our marriage.”

“Jo.” Bill looks incredulous. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You do.” She is firm in this. “You know.”

Bill has the good sense to look confused. “How would I know what kind of scenarios you’ve cooked up in your head? Other than reading them on the page,” he shoots back, turning the focus of the conversation back to what he sees as Jo’s crimes.

“That wasn’t a scenario I cooked up, Bill. That happened. I drove by one day on my way home from the hospital, and you were standing there with her, talking in a way that looked…intimate. It looked wrong. It felt wrong.”

“And then, rather than talking about it with me, you wrote about it. You turned something innocent into fodder for the public to read about, and you made me look like a bad guy.”

Nancy slides open the patio door then, Jo’s apron hanging down past her knees in a way that makes her look like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothing. “I think the sauce is ready, Mommy.”

Jo turns to her daughter. “Okay, sweetheart. Can you take it off the burner and put on a pot of water to boil for the pasta?”

Nancy nods and slides the door closed between them slowly. Her eyes are wide with wonder and concern as she watches her parents’ faces.

Jo spins back around to face Bill. “I’m done having this discussion for now. I wrote what I wrote, and I know I saw what I saw. I will give you my word that, in wrapping up this ongoing story between Maxine and Winston, I won’t include anything that is happening or has happened in our actual lives. But I need to write another installment to end things. Are you fine with that?”

Bill spreads his hands wide and gives her a look as if to say “Do I have a choice?”

“I’m giving you my word, Bill.”

He exhales loudly and scratches at his neck with an agitation that leaves red marks where his nails scrape skin. “Fine. Finish the damn story. And then I never want to read anything personal about myself, about our marriage, or about this family in a women’s magazine again, am I making myself clear?”

Jo lifts her chin just a fraction of an inch—it’s her way of being defiant without being overt. “You’re being very clear,” she says in clipped tones. “I got your message.”