“Richly rewarding . . . A family drama you won’t want to put down.” —People

“An indelible portrait of a family, messy and raw. Prickly Kate isn’t a particularly sympathetic character — but she feels like a real one.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Hannah Pittard is the writer you won’t be able to stop talking about.” — Buzzfeed

a partial list of the secrets I keep track of while I lie awake in bed most nights

I wish more people liked me.

I wish people liked me more.

Sometimes I steal gum at the grocery store.

Sometimes at Starbucks I take someone else’s order, even though I’ve ordered and paid for my own.

Sometimes in the middle of the day I go to the bathroom and undress completely and just stare at myself in the mirror. I am always different looking than I think I should be. I am always ten percent too tall, ten percent too large, ten percent not as good looking as I want to be.

When I was 15 and it was winter and I had sleeves to cover the evidence, I hit my thighs and my upper arms until there were bruises. I did this every day for two months straight. I was too wimpy to try cutting. Hitting was easier and cleaner. There isn’t a person in the world I’ve ever told about this.

Sometimes, after the adoption business and after Peter had fallen asleep, I’d masturbate in bed next to him. I did it quietly. Sometimes I wanted him to catch me. He never did.

In the middle of the night, sometimes I wake up and I can’t breathe just thinking of all the things Peter and I have accumulated. A whole moving truck worth of stuff. Not just a box or a station wagon or a van, but a moving truck worth of stuff. And I feel so empty and sad and weighed down by the emptiness. That home. That idea of home. Of a household. It’s suffocating sometimes. Before I agreed to marry him, before I told him about my debt and he helped me find a credit counselor and a debt management service and promised to pay for everything while I paid off what I owed, before all that, it was the numbers that kept me awake – the numbers on the statement and the numbers on the calendar – and the way the due dates seemed to come faster and the balance wouldn’t stop growing.

There was a year, maybe one entire year after we were first married, that I slept through the night. But then my brain turned back on and started looking around, looking at all the crap we’d acquired and I stopped sleeping again. When we were talking about adopting, it was the baby that I would think about at night. Some stranger’s baby. Living in our home. One more thing that we’d gotten our hands on. One more reason I’d be stuck forever. Those nights, I’d have to get out of bed and go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet with the lid down and struggle for breath. If I ever accidentally woke Peter, I’d just say, “It’s nothing. A nightmare.” And he’d fall back asleep and I’d think, I’m not lying at least. Because, really, it was a nightmare.

* * *

And then there is the secret that is Billy. The secret that was. The secret that is no longer a secret. He was a way to pretend all those household belongings didn’t matter, didn’t belong to me – me, the woman who, when confronted with my sister’s outdoor furniture, understands what it is to covet. The human heart is nothing if not confusing and confused.

I found Billy online, on a message board. It wasn’t slutty. Or, who knows?, maybe it was. My judgment isn’t what it could be. He didn’t know I was married. The first time we met it was just for coffee. He brought his dog. That was probably what sealed the deal. I’ve never owned a dog. I’ve never owned a pet, unless you count the series of elephant fish that I had during Cynthia’s reign. She’d always liked fish, so her one moment of support was in encouraging my Dad to let me have a small aquarium in my bedroom and one elephant fish. It died after two days. The next one lasted a little longer. The third one died the same day it came home. I buried them all in the backyard. Nell and Elliot didn’t make fun of me, but they didn’t help me bury them either. I kept the aquarium filled with water but empty of fish for a year. At night, I’d lie awake and just watch the little treasure lid bubble open and closed. I must have kept it around so long because I liked the light, liked having a night light that wasn’t technically a night light. But then Cynthia had the twins and everything old was thrown out. Anything that could carry germs. And I was moved into Nell’s room and the twins were given my bedroom as a nursery. By then I didn’t care about the aquarium. By then I didn’t need the night light because I had Nell just an arm’s reach away.

But Billy’s dog. It was this white fluff ball of a thing. It wasn’t a breed I would ever have chosen voluntarily. It was small and girly and ugly. But it had a personality! And on that very first day, it slept on my feet, just right there under the table and I had this feeling like I was looking through a window at a different life, at a different version of my life. Who was this woman with this man and this silly white dog? What kid of place did they go home to? What kind of bills awaited them there? What kind of furniture? Did they rent? Or did they own? Was there a mortgage? Were they debt free? This woman looked simpler to me, smaller, easier going, more carefree. She owned less than I did because she’d bought less than I had. This woman slept soundly through the night. I was sure of it. And if she didn’t, she at least had a dog to check in on.

Obviously, if these were my feelings, I should have gotten a dog. I should have put my foot down with Peter and said, Listen, Guy. We’re getting a dog, OK? A baby is too much for me. But I’m unhappy. And I see that I need something that needs me. And I see that you do too. We’re missing something – don’t get any ideas, Guy, I’m not talking about a baby, okay? – but I think a dog will help and if a dog doesn’t help then maybe therapy – not with you leading the sessions, okay? You could refer me to someone, though – and if therapy doesn’t help alone then maybe some of those drugs you’re always talking about and if not drugs, then we’ll think of something. But of course, it was more than just the dog. I wanted the whole package. I wanted the whole fantasy. I wanted Billy and I wanted whatever feeling it was that the simple crude act of infidelity caused in me. It was the same feeling as taking someone’s drink at Starbuck’s, but better. Bigger. It lasted longer. Not that long, but longer. A week instead of an hour. And it infected my whole body – my finger tips, my toes. I liked it. That’s the thing. I liked it.

There is maybe even the chance – somewhere way deep down in the darkness – that I wanted to do what my father had done. It was in my system. The way alcohol is born into the system of certain babies. It’s there. Everyone knows it’s there. The little baby grows up and gets married and his wife looks at him every day and every day she’s thinking, Is today the day that he becomes his father? Is today the day? I didn’t become my father. I did what he had done to prove I could, to prove it meant nothing, to prove that we weren’t the same. And, you know? Now that I’m thinking of it, I might even have done it to prove I was different than Nell and Elliot, too.

Billy himself – Billy devoid of his body – I wasn’t as obsessed with as I was with the feeling of wrongness. The personality belonged mostly to his dog. Of course, I am saying this now. I am saying this after the fact. If you’d asked me then, if you’d asked me mid-throe, I probably would have said he was a dish. Or something equally icky and sticky.

When I got bored, which took only a handful of months, I finally told him I was married. He didn’t believe me. He thought I was lying. Did I mention he was younger? He was. He was in his late 20s, which, for a single man, is the equivalent of being a large puppy. I laughed when he didn’t believe me. I wasn’t being cruel. What it was, was that I couldn’t help but imagine all the girlfriends before me – girlfriends! You get married and you think, thank god, I never have to be one of those again. But then the years go by, and you think, Girlfriend! There’s a thing I’d like to be again. There’s a word that sounds young and unburdened and lithe – and I imagined all these young long-legged tanned girls, at least one of whom had, at some point, probably claimed pregnancy as a way to keep Billy around. It was probably an ugly and hard learned lesson for him, when he found out she was lying. Now here I was claiming marriage as an excuse to break up. Of course he didn’t believe me. It wasn’t till I showed him the ring that he finally got it. And then he got mad. And then the dog peed on the carpet. (This wasn’t a new thing. The dog was always peeing on the carpet.) And then I left. He only started calling two months ago. He left me alone through the spring. I don’t know what happened. Probably it’s as simple as he’d never been broken up with before. Probably he went through a few more girls after me and they were boring and he’s since mistaken my being married as not being boring. But he’s wrong. He is wrong. I’m as boring as they are. I’m more boring. I’m doing him a favor being cruel like this. In the long run, I’m doing him and his future wife a favor. He’ll learn something from this. Exactly what, I can’t say. But he’ll learn something. That’s the guarantee. That’s what they teach you while you’re growing up. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Fact.

Excerpted from Reunion by Hannah Pittard, published by Grand Central Publishing. Copyright © 2014 Hannah Pittard.