I did swipe something once when I was there, a pair of fashionable sunglasses sitting on the table by the door. I really liked them, and fuck it, she was never coming back.

“You had a pair of sunglasses by the door and I finally just stole them,” I told her over the phone.

“Ha,” she said. “Those were yours.” As in, they actually were.

So even then she wasn’t, but then she was. One terrible ambulance ride and one even worse cab ride to the ER, where Emma and I had to push and pull her out of the back seat while she clung to the armrest. As soon as she realized what she was doing and possibly the hopelessness of it, she grinned. That was all, just a momentary resistance that unmasked the ferocity. We did that to her.

And then a few weeks later, coming home from teaching, two hours up the Taconic in traffic, arriving in my kitchen long after dark, exhausted and crabby, to see dinner laid out on the long farmhouse table, things I like to eat, and a half-frozen bottle of beer that I like to drink. I’m going to say there were flowers in a vase, though not with the stems cut the way I like them, because everything can’t be perfect. Still, country bucolic, and dogs by the wood burner, Shep and Nell, with Rocket banished to a distance for covetously loving me too much, and also for loving the table when it had food on it. Little Rocketman, who ended up dying of an enlarged heart, so literal. The most beautiful dog ever, blue merle with brown eyes, some combination of border collie, Australian shepherd, and lunacy. We had driven all the way to West Virginia to get him after impulse-browsing on the computer.

“Are you going to take him?” the shelter woman had asked as soon as we got out of the car. She had him on a leash, still damp from his bath, trying to wear him out. We were there solely on a scouting mission, we were not committing to anything, we had coached ourselves on the long drive down. Be strict, this is not a small decision, et cetera.

“Yes,” we said.

So, the laden table and Rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air. Over India, over Paraguay, over the Hudson, Emma and I running from hill to hill, but all we could see were little puffs of smoke, like the wood burner on that cold night when the wind was gusting. Thank you for making me dinner, and sorry I couldn’t eat it, because my phone rang and it was the hospice nurse.

If I wanted to be with her, I needed to come now.

Now? What do you mean, like now-now?

Yes, like now-now. It is happening.

How do you know that? I just saw her last night; you just met her yesterday.

Well, yes, sometimes it works that way.

What way?