I relaxed, because I could tell part of the problem from his tone. He’d reverted to an older accusation, one I could accept. That I was the one who knew security, that I should be the one on top of those things just as he was always on top of cooking meals.

“We can extend the security system out here,” I said. “It’s probably just someone passing through. Some transient spending the night. Or, happy thought: it could be a neighbor whose wife doesn’t want him smoking.”

I didn’t think it was any of those things.

“We’re putting in a fence,” he said. “I don’t care how it looks. You call someone.”

Through my fatigue, irritation. He didn’t understand my job, that I managed security. I wasn’t out there in a uniform installing home security systems.

“Could be one of your unhappy clients, too, you know,” I said.

It just came out. Didn’t mean it, except I did. He spent too much time helping a colleague off-load homes in a subdivision plagued with housing code citations. Just because they were old friends.

“Really?” he said. “Really?”

Not really. But we’d never have the real. That was the sadness that came over me in that moment. Struck me—hard—that the distance between us had increased tenfold since I’d left for New York. And it was all my fault.

He stalked off. He’d drop the subject. I’d drop the subject. We would click back into place on the tracks, like it had never happened, a space I could inhabit like an actor. If I wanted to.

Because we had a reservoir of love and goodwill? Because we, like most, were creatures of habit?

I never discovered the answer, because there was also the world beyond us, changing and changing again.

[37]

I met my husband in college. He’d been on the football team, third-string defensive end. More specific: on a bus to the pep rally for a crosstown rivalry that spanned multiple sports. This big, hulking guy with great hair and a wicked smile.

“Hey, Dandelion,” he’d said. Absurd. No one had mistaken me for a dandelion even as a kid. But he managed to convey by his tone that he thought I was hot, that I was not a dandelion, but that he wasn’t making fun of me.

“Hey, Bear,” I said, from within the cocoon of my fellow female athletes. Like we’d known each other for years. “How’re things? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“You know—the usual,” he said. “Was in prison for a while. Then lost a bet. Had to board a bus. To go sit on a bench.”

“Bus to lift a bench, Bear. Like always.”

“How about you? Did you ever get certified as a psychic?”

“No. Turns out I’m terrible at seeing the future.”