It was Monday, January 2. It was a new week of a new year, and Winnie was busy telling everyone that today was the day. That tree in her yard was coming down later in the afternoon, so everyone would just have to find something else to be upset about. In town for errands that morning, she even stopped by Hand Me Down to tell Moira, the other saleswoman (Rachel was in San Francisco with the girls until the end of the week). “By three thirty at the latest,” she said. “I’m going to document the whole thing. Maybe I’ll put it on YouTube!” At the bank, she ran into Don Martin. “That tree had a nice, long tree life,” she said. “But when your number’s up, it’s up.” She told the young woman behind the deli counter at Fresh Market, who asked what a sycamore was, and she told the young man who bagged up her groceries and set them in her cart. (Winnie remembered when they used to bring them out to your car.) “By dinnertime that old tree will be zzzvvvippp,” she said, making the appropriate throat-slitting sound to accompany the gesture.

As it turned out, Gil from Lawn Care—the only tree company who would do the job—was anxious to avoid any more media attention, and had obsessed, in Winnie’s view, about finding the right date and time for the cutting and removal process. For a long time, Gil wanted to keep the schedule a secret. And then he had even suggested that they purposely leak a wrong date, in order to throw people off the scent. This struck Winnie as overkill, and then she realized that he must be worried that any bad press would be bad for business. But when she mentioned this, Gil agreed only vaguely. True, we don’t need to be on any front page, he’d said. And then, uneasily: Plus, there are a lot of freaks out there.

But Winnie was less scared of the “freaks”—for this, she substituted “prank callers”—than she was of what it would do to her if she had to give up on this. This: holding on to an idea, an ideal, about herself and Jerry; everything she’d been promised by falling in love. And if she could dimly recognize that her own need for the pool had somehow taken priority, above even Jerry’s back pain, the thought was brief and shaming, and then quickly buried in plans, phone calls, the undertaking itself.

In deference to Gil, she’d kept today’s date a secret, but now that the day was here, she couldn’t see the harm in spreading the news, nor could she help it. Most people in town received this news with a polite tolerance or perhaps a slight trace of alarm, possibly from the vehement cheer of its delivery. Winnie didn’t imagine that she’d happen to run into one of the prank phone callers and dog-waste throwers, whoever they were, but she almost hoped she would. She was spoiling for a fight. One woman, that second daughter of Becca Kingsley’s, balancing a crying toddler on one hip, had earnestly tried to engage her in a discussion about the reasons for such a drastic act. Hadn’t Winnie even explored any other options? Building an above-ground pool, for example? Building an addition onto the house for an infinity pool? And they were doing wonders now with acupuncture. Winnie brushed it all off, remembering now why she could never remember this disagreeable woman’s name. Really, she said to herself, does she think I’m made of money? “Nope,” she said. “This afternoon I’m going to settle into my front-row seat and watch the big guy come crashing down. I may make popcorn!” She had to admit it was enjoyable, shocking Becca Kingsley’s daughter in this way.

Also, announcing the tree’s execution later today with such relish helped to block out all the other things Winnie was trying to avoid. “How’s Rachel?” Moira had asked. “Getting tan, I bet.” “Oh, fine, fine,” Winnie had muttered, hurrying back out the door. How could she say anything about the truth, which was that she and Rachel hadn’t spoken before they’d left for California, other than a quick Christmas phone call? How could she say anything about how things had been since Thanksgiving? Her daughter was fixated on 50 Greenham—my home, Winnie thought—on the money it represented, on what it would all do for her, Rachel, and she didn’t give a single thought to what it meant to her mother, or to the fact that some things had nothing to do with money. Yes, Rachel and Bob were having hard times. Well, what family didn’t, at one time or another? And everything Winnie had done for them, over the years…

No. That was not the way to think. Better to focus on the tree—the pool, and the tree, and what Jerry’s face would look like as he eased himself into the water, on the first warm day of the summer. Did they still shout, “Tim-ber!” she wondered. She would find out soon enough.

“Where’s that handsome new grandson of yours?” Eliza McVeer called out, putting money in her meter. “He’s a corker.”

“Busy,” Winnie said, scuttling away toward Rudy’s to pick up a pair of resoled shoes. “Too busy for us old folks.” She could laugh with Eliza, but a pang struck deep. Jerry had stopped mentioning Avery, and she had stopped phoning him.

Last stop was the library, a redbrick Georgian (Winnie remembered her father fretting that the design clashed entirely with his station, three blocks to the east) where she picked up three books on hold: that new biography of John Adams that everyone was talking about; plus a book about garbage in America, which looked particularly disgusting and interesting; and the newest Sue Grafton mystery novel. The same placid, pasty-faced clerk who had worked the circulation desk for years had to slowly sort through all the titles on the shelf behind him, even as Winnie pointed to the right ones. Then she realized he was muttering, “McClelland, McClelland,” as he flipped through the paper slips stuck in the books.

“Trevis,” she corrected firmly. And the chance to do so, the very word itself, brought such a swell of delight that Winnie found herself magnanimous, benevolent, able to forgive this slow dolt of a clerk. She chatted with him about the weather—no snow yet, but surely by week’s end…and then of course launched into a full description of the tree and the pool and the sycamore’s last few hours. He didn’t have much to say, this sour man, just went about scanning her books with the occasional grunt. Well, no matter, Winnie thought. She waved him a jaunty good-bye.

There was a table set up near the library entrance that featured recent books on military history. She paused here, looking over one on the Korean War. Jerry occasionally liked to read these—he’d even been interviewed and quoted once, by a Chicago historian. Had he already seen this one? She turned it over in her hands, recognizing neither author nor title, but that didn’t mean anything. And then, one of the disloyal thoughts. One of the scary ones, the ones she was getting very good at squelching. This one ran along the lines of, Just get it, if you like—you know he won’t remember if he’s read it or not.

She flipped open the front cover, reading hastily: “Our Forgotten War, it is sometimes called. On June 25, 1950, a firestorm from North Korean…” Winnie paused. June 25. Their wedding day, last year. How strange that Jerry had never mentioned the coincidence of dates.

And then, it came again, one of those memories that veered toward her in waves, another bombing sortie from which she needed to duck and cover. Weeks ago, gathering up the mail from its scattered pile inside the front door, she had been surprised by the sight of a dozen recognizable green envelopes, Christmas cards, ones she knew Jerry had mailed out a few days ago to old friends and colleagues. She gathered them up; each was stamped return to sender next to the unfriendly image of a pointing forefinger. Her first thought: Had he forgotten the stamps? But then she saw what he had done, and her stomach tilted sharply. All the addresses were wrong—not wrong in information, but placed awry, all over the envelopes. On one, he’d put the recipient’s name and street to the very top right, where a stamp hid most of it. On another, he’d put his own name, and 50 Greenham, right in the front middle, and the rest of it on the backside, circled helplessly. They were all like this, she found, rapidly flipping through—names and addresses set down haphazardly, in Jerry’s unmistakable hand, no two the same, sideways, backward, as if according to an entirely different postal scheme.

Winnie hadn’t said anything to anyone; she’d thrown away the envelopes and mailed the cards again, in new ones. But that was just the first instance—the first discovery. One little thing gone topsy-turvy.

Now in the library, Winnie pulled out her cell phone. This book looked fascinating, and Jerry might well enjoy it. He was probably on his way back from physical therapy now—she might catch him in the car. new voicemail message, the screen read. She put the book down on the table, on top of her own stack, and moved into the chilly small foyer to listen. A male voice, vaguely familiar:

“Yeah, uh—Mrs. Trevis, this is Gil from Lawn Care. We’re going to need to be out at your place earlier today, because of another job. And because—you know. Keep ’em off balance. I think the guys should be there by ten or so. Okay? Just letting you know. Thanksandhaveagoodday.”

Ten? Ten o’clock today, meaning this morning? Winnie clicked through the phone features, her mind awhirl. 11:42, the display read. But—but—that meant…

She fled. She forgot her checked-out books. Someone called to her, in the parking lot, but Winnie didn’t even look over. She dropped her keys on the cold pavement, and scraped her knuckles snatching them back up. And in the car, her heart pounding, she didn’t notice that she was speaking aloud. “No,” she whispered, gripping the steering wheel. “Move, damn it. Move!” A large white delivery truck was backing out of a driveway, blocking Seminole completely. So Winnie swung onto Alden Lane, even though it was clearly marked no through traffic and she knew Bella Guidry might see and recognize her car. Winnie drove fast, much faster than she was accustomed to, and let out a stifled yelp when she sideswiped a wheeled garbage can—left much too far out into the street—when she veered onto Franklin. There was a wordless panic inside her. Winnie accelerated up the short hill as she came onto her own street, and bumped hard over the curb and back down, before she could control the car.

And then she was home, though for a confused moment it didn’t seem so. Something was awry. Something about the corner of Franklin and Greenham Avenue itself. Winnie pulled to a stop in her own driveway, and she had to look again to make sure where she was. It wasn’t the half dozen men milling around in the front yard, or the two nondescript trucks—one parked on the street, one in the driveway—or the strange orange tractor-like machine that was lodged on the grass. She got out of the car, leaving the door open—setting off an endless digital beeping—and the keys forgotten in the ignition.

What was different was the quality of the sky, January-white and full of clouds. It loomed low over the house and the lawn, over the crumbled stone fence at the lawn’s border, and the crossway of Franklin and Greenham, once secluded, now bathed in openness and light. The sky came down so far it seemed to press everything—house, lawn, street—far, far down, flat against the ground, a hopeless ridge of growth that was mocked in contrast to the pale, windy immensity of the sky.

The tree was down.

Winnie walked slowly across the trampled grass. No one had turned out for a protest. There were no hordes of tree huggers, no chanting or singing or angry shouts from strangers. The only spectators were neighbors at their windows, or in their own front yards, watching her in silence—and Winnie didn’t notice them; she didn’t see Vi Greenberg there across the street, standing cold and still, hands jammed into her coat pockets. Winnie stumbled toward the center of her unfamiliar lawn, to the pile of sawed-off trunk sections, collapsed together piece upon piece, a giant-child’s heap of toy blocks. The pile rose high above her like a bonfire, ready to be set ablaze. She moved close enough to put the flat of her hand against the woody inside of one piece, and found, with a heartsick zing, that it was still warm there. Tiny black ants streamed down in rivulets, streamed down and out, across those bright concentric rings, too many to count, across Winnie’s own hand. Escaping.

A man wearing blue headphones and a helmet appeared, shouting something at her, guiding her away from the heavy pieces of tree, the unsteady pile. All sounds were drowned out by the orange machine, which whirred and crunched and splintered, spraying out a fine mist from one end. Winnie allowed herself to be led away. She averted her eyes as she passed, glimpsing a branch fed into the machine’s wide opening, and the gurgling crunch of the blades, setting to work.

Back on the safe pavement of the driveway, Winnie tried, for a moment, to see where the trunk was. The remaining trunk, that is—the sheared-off piece, still rooted in the ground, where the sycamore had once stood. She stood there, bare and exposed in the newfound expanse of sky. She faced it head-on, this thing she had done—she forced herself to do that, at least. And yet, when she discovered that the cut-off trunk was temporarily hidden from view by the rising pile, by all the bags and men and the machine on the grass, by the blurring of her own eyes, she granted herself a small measure of reprieve. With no right to be, Winnie was grateful; she wasn’t sure, at that moment, she could have borne it.