After Paris, after the ring, I’ve always had a suspicion about losing things. It seems lucky somehow to do it. It seems like the lost thing or things will come back better than before, a more perfect fit. At least there’s the possibility of that. Miracles can only happen to people who have lost things. My mother used to say that to me and it seems very much the truth. It’s also maybe true that we can never really lose the things we love. Our love makes them belong only to us and so we can smile and not ever worry. We expect miracles! We who are deserving people. We lovers who love who we love.

M was getting up off the floor, smiling at me. He was such a good father. E was tending to the baby giraffe again who was sick and looking for its mother. She’s gone, E kept telling it and waiting, looking at it closely as if to check for any expression that might run across its face. M set B down in his crib. Shh, he whispered to me, don’t wake him. I only just got him to sleep.

M had to go to the office. Only for an hour, maybe two, he said. Aurelie and Jean wanted to finalize arrangements. He kissed me before I could say, Stop. Before I could say, Don’t go. I’ll make dinner just the way you like. I’ll say the thing that you will love, the thing that will make you laugh, the thing that will make you stay.

We used to eat sandwiches together every Wednesday night and drink lemonade and we would laugh at ourselves because it felt then that being an adult could still be just pretending, a coat we could take on and off.

I made noodles for E and we slurped them up one by one like snakes and then we all went to bed together, E and B and I. B nursed all night long but I didn’t mind. I rocked him from one side to the other. The hours were things inside of things inside of other things. All packed away together. We all kept time like this, inside ourselves.

M didn’t come home from the office that night, but that was all right because in the morning he was there. I woke up late and found him. He’d already made coffee. It was on the table waiting for me. Sorry about last night, he said. One of the computers crashed, he said. I imagined the data spilling out like oil, little bits and big bits of the company’s money spreading out thick and dark all over the office carpet, sinking into it.

He and Jean had been scrambling all night, M said, to fix it. I could see them working in the dark like fishermen in the frozen north, passing all the hours hauling in nets, the water so cold and dripping like nectar off the almost frozen bodies of their silvery catch. Work work work, M said, grinning at me in that way that I really loved. He had the handle of his rolling suitcase in his hand and I was only just seeing that.