I started to go to meetings again. I wasn’t going to drink or anything else – it never entered my mind, actually – I just needed some structure to the day, to see someone, people who knew Frank, some who knew me. I would wake up in the morning, go out and get a coffee, try to do some reading, and then walk about two miles to a meeting and then walk back home afterward. Sometimes the walk was the best part. There’s satisfaction in repetition, consolation and comfort in the routine. You take the same path at the same time every day and you start to notice the patterns, the way the gears work, silently and efficiently, unnoticed mostly. There were the same people at the coffee shop ordering the same thing every morning, the same people at the same tables reading, the same people walking the same streets. There was the man on his way to work who never knew what coffee to order, and then always ended up getting the latte, always. There was the woman who always sat at the same table, reading her tablet and absent-mindedly chewing on her long dark hair. There was the husband and wife I always saw at the same intersection, with a baby carriage and a big black Chow, the only thing different from one day to the next was who had the carriage and who had the dog. There were mostly the same people in the group, sitting in the same chairs, saying the same things. I saw the same guy on his bicycle afterward, always smiling, always giving everyone a big thumbs-up as he rode past. It all made me feel good, or at least better. There were still things you could count on in the world.

And I still talked to Casey. She called every day. She never brought up Frank; she always let me bring him up. She talked about her day. She talked about her work.

“I’ve never talked to a pediatric surgeon before,” I said.

“No need,” she said.

I told her that I had a daughter. “No need for surgery, though.”

“That’s good,” she said and then told me about a nine-month-old with knife wounds she had to operate on. “The mother stabbed him for crying. She couldn’t hear the TV. She said it like it made absolute sense.”

It’s a whole different world there, I told her. For some reason I thought she lived in the same city as her parents. She did not. She lived only about an hour and a half away. Frank and I could have seen her all the time. Frank never mentioned her. I tried to be wary, but it was hard with her. She was easy to talk to, and easy just to listen. She said she lived by herself and said she was happy to be alone.