“No, don’t apologize.” She crossed her arms. Uncrossed them because she felt like crossing them made her seem like she wanted to fight. “I want to say that I trust and love you. More than I thought was possible for me.”

Felix set the bag down. Stepped toward her.

“I know you’re uncomfortable with the idea. But you’re already my wife. That’s how I think of you,” he said. “We’ve been together so long and it always feels so intense and new. Each conversation. Each kiss. Each touch. And I want you to be officially my family.”

“I love you,” Ayanna said. She took a step back. Her voice had been so small.

Felix shook his head. “It’s the doors, right?”

The pain of being known so well, the gift of being known so well. Her back was already sweating from the day’s heat. It was only past ten.

“You want to be able to go if they ever come back.”

Ayanna nodded. “I want to tell you you’re wrong.”

In her midtwenties, the phone ringing at three in the morning often meant Jane had been out partying or Jane was in Europe and was hoping Ayanna was still awake so they could hear each other’s voices; someone was missing her, someone wanted sex, someone was drunk. All those nights, the electric annoyance of seeing 3:30 a.m. on her phone, then shaking it off to feel the pleasure of here, in this time, where someone should be resting, here she was, Ayanna, still on their minds. In her thirties, it had slowed into the cliché: someone had died. That night after meditating as always on Olivia, Ayanna was dreaming, as she had been for the past week, of walking in a city that did not exist because it was a jumble of her childhood hometown, the city where she had gone to college, and a small European city filled with beautiful white buildings with facades that had carvings of men’s faces peering down with judgmental, wide eyes at those walking. As always, one of the carved men was singing but stopped when she looked at its face. The ground shook, Ayanna stooped and curled up like a pill bug. In the dream, she thought: I’m going to die. Everything shook and shook, windows shattered, then the singing started again. People sat up, brushed themselves off, and went about their business. Ayanna stayed on the ground. Her phone rang again, making the nightstand rattle. She reached for it, still mostly asleep.

This time, it was Stephen calling her. Her heart worried that somehow it would be a call about Jane, even though they had texted hours before. There was still a possibility, though, that Stephen was drunk or high and wanted to tell her about a record he had listened to or complain about another listing romance.

“My dad died,” he said when she answered the phone.