She’d bought a house because she felt sorry for it. A house no one had lived in for thirty years, a house that had changed ownership eight times in those three decades. Why in god’s name did she think she’d have better luck? She’d made three major decisions in her life: her marriage, her escape, and this house, and didn’t this one have all the elements of that first, disastrous choice? It was foolish, impulsive, recklessly optimistic, emotional, all the things that had trapped her in violence and despair for a decade, and only two years after she’d left Alain she was doing it again—
