“I don’t know,” I said. “It feels big enough to even know that. But I don’t know how to fix it.”

“I told you that through our whole marriage,” he said. “I never felt so alone as when I was with you. You wouldn’t let me in.”

“I just don’t know how,” I said.

Self-preservation is a funny thing: in order to survive, you do things that ultimately hurt your chance of survival.

“Just be honest with her,” I said. “That’s all you can do.”

I drove around with the box in my car for three days before I brought it inside. I opened it to find the oversized mug that I had purchased for no reason, or with the idea that we would drink hot chocolate together. I don’t know why there was only one. And some things we had picked up in the desert. Rocks, small bones of animals that I could not identify. Why had I spent so much time collecting remnants of death?

I didn’t want anything in the box, but instead of throwing it away I tucked it into the back of a cabinet, next to other boxes he had given me—boxes filled with birthday cards and anniversary cards that he had held on to because he was more sentimental than I was; our wedding vows—both mine and his; postcards we had found in consignment shops that were already filled out with cursive notes from people who missed each other and spoke to us in some way. I was not prepared to open any of these boxes.

My phone lit up with a message. I reached for it quickly.

Daniel had texted a simple sentence:

Was that weird?

I paused, trying to figure out how to answer. Should I play cool and aloof or needy? I knew the answer; I just didn’t know how not to feel like the latter.

What?

I saw bubbles forming and cascading back and forth.

I feel like I wasn’t answering the right way.

No no you were fine. There’s no right answer!!!

Yah ok. See you soon.