I’d never spoken openly about that day. Dr. Ihm liked the idea of my visiting the house in Isham on my Dad’s seventieth birthday this winter, as I’d planned to do all those months ago, but that was the extent of the discussion.

That horrific day happened, and the onset of my depression followed. At first, I had felt fine. Sad, of course. But nothing like the back-breaking grief I’d felt later. I’d prepared the funeral arrangements with little help, cleaned up the apartment, too, with the aid of movers from Task Rabbit. I’d handled the more organizational parts of the aftermath so well that I’d been showered with compliments. I was so strong. So mature. My dad’s friends who had lost their own parents applauded the “grace” with which I navigated this new chapter of my life.

Until it was all over and I had nothing left to do and I fell to pieces.

But now. Now it seemed so self-destructively shortsighted that I hadn’t reached out for help, hadn’t talked about it. Because look where it had landed me? A walking cliché, looking for love in all the wrong places.

“The evening was wet,” I start, because of course the weather was part of the story. “I remember being upset because I had to wear these ugly rain boots I owned to the bar where I was meeting friends. I’d wanted to wear these new white sneakers I’d just gotten, the trendy kind that everyone was wearing with jumpsuits or long skirts at the time. But I was worried about getting them dirty.” My eyes flit to the mini-fridge in the corner of the room, to the unfinished kale salad Dr. Ihm has balanced on a stack of a books next to her computer.

“It was someone’s birthday. Some friend of a friend’s. I was only there because I wanted to hook up with this guy I’d met at the same friend’s housewarming party a month earlier. I don’t even remember his name now.

“The bar was in Crown Heights, on Franklin Avenue, and this woman had reserved three tables. Beth and I got drinks beforehand, near her old apartment in Prospect Heights, then headed over. And I remember feeling so flushed and happy when this guy was there. Sitting there and bored out of his mind, it seemed, served up to me on a silver platter, waiting for me to make his night.” As I’m saying this, I can taste the blackberry bramble drink I’d ordered, the gin coating the back of my throat. I almost retch thinking of it, the liquid made dark by some fruity syrup, made even more imperceptible by the dimness of the bar.