He went to his daughter’s room. The door was open but she wasn’t in it. On her quilt on the bed was a dark-red stain and a few pale streaks. Her bathroom door was shut. He stood in silence before it.

“I’m okay, Dad.” She sounded like she was hanging upside down.

“You sure?” He couldn’t control the wobble in his voice.

“Kate’s gone to get some stuff.”

He actually already had “stuff” in his bathroom; he’d bought it for her years ago. “That’s good,” he said. Kate’s choices would be better.

He felt pleased that he was not overreacting, that he knew right away what had happened and hadn’t called an ambulance. And then he looked down and saw the blood up close. He was holding the quilt in his arms. He didn’t remember taking it off the bed. It was a quilt his mother had made and he had slept beneath as a child. The stains and streaks seemed like warnings. Soon Paula would begin complaining that he didn’t understand her, didn’t appreciate her, didn’t love her enough, when in fact he loved her so much his heart often felt shredded by it. But people always wanted words for all that roiled inside you.

“How do you feel?” he ventured.

“All right. Kinda weird.”

“Your mother used to get terrible cramps,” he said into the crack in the door. He waited for the clutch that came with talking about her, like someone had grabbed him by the chest hair. “She got headaches sometimes, too. She took extra iron. We probably still have some. They’re green, in a white bottle.” He waited, but the clutching feeling never came. “And she had a bullet birth when you were born, you know. Thirty-five minutes, I think. We barely made it to the hospital. Not that you want to be thinking of that right now.” Sweat prickled his scalp. Shut up, he told himself. “One time she was wearing these white pants and—”

“Do you miss her, Dad?”

“No.” He was astonished by the truth of it.

“I don’t either anymore. I feel like I should miss her. All I really remember is her walking me to school and holding my hand and giving me big hugs at the door. But I always knew the minute she turned her back I was out of her mind completely. She wasn’t like you. I knew you were thinking about me always.”

She was revising now, creating new memories out of what she was left with, but his eyes stung anyway.