Excerpt from Idaho by Emily Ruskovich, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ann runs her hand over the dashboard and the soft, moist pollen of last summer sticks to her palm. It is all put together for her, here. The rearview mirror is up again, glued in place, and there's a dream catcher thrown around it, with two fluorescent feathers hanging down. The carpet has been shampooed, the right backseat replaced entirely, with one that looks like the original on the left, only a brighter shade of blue and missing the little holes where the stuffing came out and where the girls might have once stuck their fingers.

Ann turns the key to let the engine run while she sits here. She breathes deeply. Nine years and the smell of the mouse's nest is gone, but every now and then, when she shifts in the driver's seat and the dust rises from the cushions, she catches what might be the hint of that old smell, distant and thinly sweet, leather and burning grass.

Though of course it could also be the controlled spring fires down in the valley fields, far away.

¦

Ann and Wade have been married for eight years. She is thirty-­eight now, and Wade is fifty.

Last year, Ann found a box of Wade's old shirts in the attic. She brought the box downstairs and sat on her knees in a warm square of sunlight on the floor. She unfolded the shirts one at a time, held each one up, and placed some in a pile for the Salvation Army and some in a pile to keep.

Wade walked into the bedroom and saw her doing this.

"Is this too small?" she said. She didn't turn around because she was trying to decide about an oil stain. She was holding the shirt up above her, to see the light shine through it.

Wade didn't answer. She thought he hadn't heard. She folded the shirt and moved on.

But the next thing she knew, Wade was pushing her head down, pushing it hard, into the box of clothes. She was so shocked that at first she laughed. But he didn't stop. The cardboard edge rubbed against her throat, and her laugh became a gasp for air and then a scream. She clawed at his legs, thrashing blindly. She pounded her fists on his shoes, jammed her elbows into his knees. He was speaking to her in a voice she recognized—­she couldn't think from where—­but it was not a voice he'd ever used with her. "No! No!"—­almost a growl.

His dogs. He used that voice to train the dogs.

Then he let her go. He stepped back. She lifted her head, slowly, with caution. He sighed deeply, then he touched her shoulder as if to ask for her forgiveness, or—­this occurred to her even in her shock—­to offer forgiveness to her. After a minute, he asked her if she'd seen his mowing shoes.

"No," she said, staring into the box of clothes. She sat on her knees, shaking, smoothing down the static in her hair, over and over again, as if that would make a difference. Wade found his shoes, put them on, went outside. In a few minutes, she heard the tractor. Wade was clearing the knapweed from the pasture.

In the year leading up to the strange episode with the box of clothes, he had done other things that alarmed her. He made phone calls to his customers, accusing them of sending bad checks, even as Ann proved to him with bank statements that he was wrong. He threaded his bootlaces so that they tied at the bottom instead of the top. He purchased the same pair of pliers three times in one week. He threw her fresh loaf of bread, still sinking in its warmth, into the mulch bucket to feed the hens as if she had baked it for them. Once, in the last week of January, he cut a beautiful white pine and dragged it a mile through the new snow. When he arrived in the yard where Ann was, he motioned to it, smiling. "You think this is too tall?"

A Christmas tree.

"But Christmas—­ Wade, it was a month ago."

"What?"

"You don't remember?" She laughed, horrified. "Where do you think you got that coat you're wearing?"

Excerpted from Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. Copyright © 2017 by Emily Ruskovich. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.