George made a whirring sound and a helicopter motion with his hand, gently mocking her overprotective nature. All she was able to see in the moonlight was a dark blur of water beyond the edge of the hill, and the tip of the long wooden dock. Joan glanced towards the window again, unable to stop herself from getting up and leaning over the sink on her tiptoes, pressing her forehead against the glass.

Usually George was watching the news by now, head leaned back and mouth agape with a slow, murmuring snore. That night they’d had grilled salmon and rice noodles, sautéed greens.

Marriage is so much about embedded routines. “Maybe I should go check on them anyway,” she said. Remember those nine hundred years of swimming lessons? Those ceremonies with the badges?” The image would be of the girl’s cold arm hanging off the gurney as she was wheeled down the hall at the trauma center. She would get flashbacks of a teenaged girl she’d worked on at the hospital who had drowned and come back to life but remained essentially brain-dead. She took a sip, turned back to the expansive bay window, trying to make sure Jimmy and Sadie were not in any trouble. Joan was drying the last dinner plate, about to go wrap Sadie’s birthday presents, but her husband George took the dishtowel from her hand and replaced it with a glass of red wine. Her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible (2009) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts (2007) made the Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of the Year. With exquisite emotional precision, award-winning author Zoe Whittall explores issues of loyalty, truth, and the meaning of happiness through the lens of an all-American family on the brink of collapse.

The following is from Zoe Whittall’s novel, The Best Kind of People.

The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall