“We have a long way to get there,” I said, holding up the packet.

“Overcome recently, or a while back, or what?” he asked.

“However you think it applies.”

“Let me think about it.”

I stared at the floor while Daniel thought about it. Sticky liquid had spilled across the floor at some point and it was now dried splatter, collecting dust. He followed my eyes and saw it, too.

“What trait have you managed to overcome?” he asked me.

I wanted to say my being here was overcoming something, but I didn’t say anything.

“See, it’s not that easy to tell someone the truth.”

“I had to answer these myself,” I said. “I know it’s not easy.”

“So what did you say?”

“I don’t remember.”

That was a lie.

“I thought you’d just come here and give me the pills and kill me. Or bring me a plastic bag. Not all this soul-searching shit.”

“I’m sure you can find a bag in your kitchen. And I don’t kill people.”

“Not physically, maybe.” He looked at me and smiled.

A personal flaw I had not yet overcome: wanting to seem dangerous.

We weren’t supposed to lead them to an answer. They were supposed to answer with the first thing that popped into their heads. I looked up at him while he squinted at the ceiling.

“What’s a personal trait I’ve managed to overcome?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. It appeared that he had settled on something.

“My inability to forgive.”

“That’s a good one. I wasn’t expecting that.”

We weren’t supposed to cast value judgments on our clients or their answers, but I was stuck on wanting to make an impression.

“Do I look like someone who doesn’t know how to forgive people?”

“Not at all,” I said. “That’s just really big. Congratulations.”

“You look like you forgive people for a lot.”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s something I wasn’t willing to do for a long time—you fuck with me and you’re dead to me. But that gets exhausting.”

“I get it.”

He looked at me like he wasn’t searching for my affirmation and yet here I was pushing it on him. I nodded and looked away. He made me nervous in a way that Daphne and Lawrence had not. Maybe because we were close in age. Daniel felt like a stand-in for every man I had known, and I still didn’t have the courage to ask why he’d hurt people or why he was hurt.

I didn’t want to manipulate him, really. I just wanted something from him as much as he wanted me to provide him with an exit plan that felt less lonely.

“We’re here to learn lessons for something else,” he said, “some other plane of existence, I think.”

“What do you mean?”