My husband left his medication at home, so I stopped by his office to bring it to him. But when I asked the receptionist to call him downstairs, she said, "Ma'am, your husband has been on leave for the past week."

Not the receptionist. The receptionist could have been a mistake — a system, a wrong Vance, four hundred things.

That message.

Work's mental this morning.

My husband was lying to me in writing, at four minutes past ten, with a kiss on the end of it.

I did not do one useful thing that day.

I sat in front of a screen for about seven hours and went through every explanation that exists, in order, about four times.

Including four of them that I did not want anywhere near my head and that I am not going to write down.

He came home at twenty to seven that evening.

He was in a good mood. He made the dinner, which he does on Thursdays. He asked me about a thing at my work and he remembered the name of the woman involved.

And I lay next to that man in the dark for about two hours.