“Why is it in that bag?”

“It’s how I carry it around,” said Glory curtly.

“Why do you have to … carry it around?” asked East.

Glory almost told East that she really didn’t want to get into it. Because she really didn’t want to get into it. At all. But there didn’t seem to be a way for her to not get into it.

And maybe a part of her felt like getting into it with him.

So she got into it.

“It’s broken,” she confessed—and she was surprised to feel that strange lightness fill up her insides again. This time, it felt like an unburdening. And it felt good.

“Oh,” said East.

Glory expected East to have an opinion about her strange answer. But he didn’t. Instead, he simply asked, “What happened?”

“Wes broke it.”

“Your husband,” said East, making sure he was remembering who Wes was.

“Yeah. He went away.”

“Oh,” said East, saddened by the revelation.

“With someone else.”

“Oh, no,” groaned East.

“Yeah. And when he did that … well, I felt like my heart was gonna break. And that’s exactly what happened. It broke.”

Glory paused and checked in with East to see if he believed her.

And he didn’t seem to believe or disbelieve her. He seemed to be listening without judgment and without forming an opinion. Which was how he usually listened.

“And,” she continued, “it hurt so bad, I had to go to the hospital, and when I got there, well—I didn’t know this, because I was out cold—but … I guess it had broken.”

This was actually true. Glory had developed takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart’s left ventricle that can occur as the result of severe emotional or physical stress—like when a husband leaves his wife for another woman. It’s also called broken-heart syndrome, and most people recover from it quickly with no lasting damage.

But not Glory. Her case was extreme: when she arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered that her heart had actually broken in two.

Glory eyed East before she continued, gauging how crazy he seemed to think she was.

But he didn’t seem to think she was crazy at all. He still just seemed to be listening.

“I almost died, I guess,” she continued. “But they hooked me up to a machine that resuscitated me and called in an expert”—fortunately Glory lived in a place where there were lots of experts—“and the expert took the two broken halves of my heart out of my chest, and when he did that, he somehow managed to drop them on the operating room floor, and they broke into nineteen pieces.”

Glory held up the brown paper bag she was holding.

“Slate,” Glory explained, shaking the bag three times. The shards in the bag clanked together as Glory shook them, making a jangly, earthy sound as they did. “It turned to slate,” added Glory.

After East took a moment to process what he had heard, he said the only thing he could think of to say to someone who had just told him that her heart had turned to slate: “Great for roofing.”