She wondered if her recent preoccupation with her childhood was a sign that things really were coming to an end, that it was her animal body’s way of telling her that the only thing left to do was remember, because there would be no future for her or her friends. But then, so many people she knew were pregnant. Soon the office would be empty with maternity, and she, empty, filled to the brim with responsibility. The world was never just one thing.

When she and Philip were nine and seven, they’d produced a book together, him taking charge of the writing, she the illustrations. It was the story of a relationship, from a couple’s first meeting through marriage, childbirth, parenting, and old age. She remembered wanting it to end with the pair’s death—their great-grandmother had recently died, it was all she could think about—and Philip refusing. He had softer edges than she did. He was more generous, less outwardly afraid of things, though maybe it was because he refused to countenance them. She had drawn, on the back cover of their stapled production, two bloody corpses lying next to each other in the road. She could still picture the crude snuff illustration now, with her child scrawl underneath it: “THER DED.” Philip had not been amused. At some point their mother framed the thing, so all you could see was the front cover, a cheerful, if distinctly motor-skill-challenged catalogue of the characters that would appear in the forthcoming pages. But Cassie knew what was on the other side.

Leonard, the man she was dating, did not seem likely to understand or transform her, but his presence made her feel a little better about the world, or slightly less vulnerable, at least, to falling off its edge. He was an account manager for a financial services company, which she found terrifying at first, but he seemed to genuinely not care very much about it. He did care seriously and with a relative lack of pretension about a number of things—skiing, watches, wine—toward which she had little knowledge or inclination, but she found his passion for them comforting. He was quite sure these things were worthwhile, and why not? As long as he didn’t start voting Republican, she could tolerate some patrician pretensions in exchange for body warmth and decent chat. He was, despite his expensive coat, the rare man—person, really—who seemed to listen to her with something like full attention.