For a man who considered himself an optimist, it was a strange sensation for Jesse Austin to feel despair stalking them, glimpsed from time to time out of the corner of his eye. Even as his wife walked across the apartment her body expressed profound weariness, a heavy sway instead of her once characteristic brisk pace, exhaustion that went deeper than working too hard or fretting about money, exhaustion sunk into her bones making them as heavy as lead. She’d been worn down. Constant worrying had matted her hair, dulled her eyes, squeezed the blood from her lips and even altered the way she spoke. Her words had lost their playfulness, no longer singing with mischievous intelligence. They dropped out of her mouth as if a burden sat on the shoulder of each syllable, revealing tiredness that couldn’t be remedied by a good night’s sleep, or even a couple of days off work. In recent years he’d wondered if Anna’s strength and resilience had been a curse rather than a gift. Anyone else would’ve left him, broken by the strain. Colleagues and friends had cut him loose. A few had even testified against him, stood before a HUAC hearing, pointing at him with trembling outrage as though he’d been guilty of murder. Not Anna, not for a second, and not a day went by that Jesse didn’t feel humbled by her love.