Outwardly I was cheerful, and after a time they began to treat me normally again, believing I was over it. I wasn’t. I was furious—with myself, with Henry. With the cruel natural order that had made me simultaneously undesirable to men and unable to feel complete without one. I saw that my former contentment had been a lie. This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along. Henry had merely been the one who’d shown it to me.
