I was supposed to be getting dressed for the party, the first since my murder. Instead, I was messing around with the shower drain, which was running at a creep, leaving the inside of the tub scaled with soap and peppered with dirt. So I wasn’t dressed, not a shoe, not an earring, not a panty. I was naked, in fact, and crouched in the tub, sending an unwound hanger down the drain after a wad of another woman’s hair.

The hanger scratched the wall of the drain, scratched again, but then (gotcha!) sank into something soft.

“I have pants!” Silas called through the door.

At his voice, the hanger twisted in my fingers, the end of it surfacing with a small puff of drain gunk. I cursed.

“Now socks!” he called.

I sent the hanger down again. Was it silly to feel sorry for the bathtub, holding all of that water, letting all of that water run through it? Surely after all the washing that went on inside it, the poor thing might hope to be left clean.

“I’m tying my tie,” Silas said. “It’ll take one minute. Two.”

This was Silas. This has always been Silas. When we’re late, he’ll announce each of his preparations as he makes them. He becomes a ticking clock of toiletry, my husband.

“I’m just stepping out of the shower!” I called back.

Actually, I’d done no such thing. But I almost had it now. I could feel the small suck of resistance as I pulled the hanger up and out. And there it was, a dark knot of hair, glistening in its placenta of soap. It was the size of a mouse. I poked the hair with the end of the hanger. This was my hair.

This wasn’t my hair.

This was her hair.