The arms around her tightened momentarily, and then he was turning her in his lap until she was once again facing him, her thighs on either side of his hips. He framed her face between his hands as he brought his lips to hers. They kissed for minutes. When he finally broke the kiss, dragging his mouth from hers, they were both breathing heavily. “I need you to promise me something,” he whispered against her ear, his voice sounding deeper than normal. “No drugs. I can’t handle you doing drugs.”

The third day after Knight’s arrival, Lina made it through the night without the assistance of pills or a middle-of-the-night phone call to Nick or Phil. “We did it,” she whispered as she scratched the furry head staring up at her from beside the bed. She’d woken up at 2:00 a.m., sitting up in the bed terrified, but instead of reaching for the phone, she’d forced herself to go to him.

She’d sat down beside his dog bed, trying to catch her breath, running her hand over his coat as she concentrated on her breathing, and telling herself what she knew Phil would if she called him, to breathe in and out deeply, to imagine herself at a beach with seagulls crying overhead as she breathed in the sea air. The first two nights it hadn’t worked, and she’d ended up calling Phil and taking a pill, but on the third night, probably because she was starting to care about the dog, his presence calmed her, and ten minutes later she was climbing back into her bed and falling asleep.

“It means I can sleep without someone beside me,” Lina explained to Adele when they met later that day. “Do you know how freeing that is?”

“But now you have to be with a dog? How are we going to travel? You can’t just bring a dog to a Caribbean resort.”

“He didn’t calm me down. I mean, he was there, but I calmed myself down. It was always Phil’s voice or lately medication, but last night, for the first time, I did it.”

“So we can go to the Caribbean without the dog?”

“What are you talking about? I never said anything about going to the Caribbean with you.”

“Not now, but this winter. We can go to one of those singles resorts. Oh my God, we’ll have so much fun.”

“I’m not really in the mood to have fun.”

“What do you mean? I thought you were doing okay without him.”

“It’s been nine days. I think I’m doing well. I just…” She sighed. “I feel unsettled. I have this underlying anxiety that won’t go away.”

“That’s normal.” Adele covered her hand. “Totally normal. You’ve been with him your whole adult life. Your world has been upended. You just need to give it a little time.”