Free Acts of God by Mary Morris

cabin. Charlie thought all this was great. He made love to me three times a day and when we were finished, he cradled my face in his hands and told me how much he loved me.
    It usually took me a moment after I spoke with Charlie to catch my breath, as if I’d been punched hard in the gut. When I married Charlie, there had seemed to be something that stood between us. I wish it hadn’t been that way, but it had. For months after we separated, I thought about what he’d said. How I never gave anything away. I remembered when I was a kid there was a toothpaste that had this active ingredient, Gardol. In commercials on TV Gardol was an invisible shield. When it came down over your teeth, Mr. Tooth Decay, a hideous black creature with nasty jaws, couldn’t get through.
    For a long time I imagined Gardol protecting me as Mr. Tooth Decay—or whatever else I needed protection from—fought to get through. I imagined invisible shields everywhere and at some point it became clear to me that I couldn’t shake them. I kept thinking somebody would come along and fight his way past, but he or she never had. I was always sorry after I talked to Charlie that he hadn’t been the one.
    I went to the door of the living room and called, “Hey, Teddy, Jade. Why don’t we order a pizza? Or I’ll make a noodle casserole. Would you guys like that?”
    â€œNo thanks, Mom,” Ted shouted back. “Not hungry.”
    â€œMe either,” Jade piped in. I poked around in the fridge, found some leftover casserole, which I dug into with a fork. When I was their age, I had things I wanted to do with my life. Now, night after night, they sat watching Seinfeld or listening to Loose Screw. Recently Jade had been saying she wanted to go to massage therapy school. Before that, she talked about being a flight attendant.
    I gazed at the bills for a new roof, mortgage, car payments, the appraiser, setting aside the ones that would have to wait a month or so. There was also the set of keys I kept to all the houses I was responsible for. These were houses of fairly wealthy people who were away half the year, but wanted the income from a rental to cover their costs while they were in the Bahamas or back East. Maybe I should charge admission to my house, I thought. It seemed like a sensible thing to do.
    I had been thinking about opening the bed-and-breakfast in earnest. In fact, ever since my little start-up company, Mind Your Own Business, failed, it’d been about the only thing I could think of. Mind Your Own Business was a company for people who wanted to start their own at-home small businesses, and the idea was that my company would get them set up. I had a partner—a friend from San Francisco—and we offered office design, computer setup and programming, file management, marketing surveys, mailing lists—whatever a client needed. The problem was most people in start-ups didn’t have the money for my services. We lasted a year. I still thought it was a good idea.
    But for now, turning the house into a bed-and-breakfast seemed the way to resolve everything. Though the house was small—just three bedrooms—it had two baths and I could convert the garage into a separate apartment, which would be good for families. I could even turn the den, which had a breathtaking view of the sea, into a small room. This would give me five spaces to rent out. I would be able to keep my house, which everyone wanted to see anyway. Lots of historic houses (like Lizzie Borden’s, Ted reminded me when I brought up this idea) were being turned into B-and-Bs. It would pay for bills and provide a decent tax write-off. I could have guests whenever I wanted, but I wouldn’t have to all the time.
    Besides, I liked the idea of people from Stuttgart or Bogotá stopping for a night on their way down the coast. I could offer walking tours of this craggy shoreline, share my knowledge of marine life. Or