I have this overwhelming sense that I am losing control again. Not in the slinky, depressive way I’d survived all last year, but that my emotions, my twisted shades of grief, are galloping away from me, that I can’t rein them in. Even with my supposed commitment to therapy, to healthy ways of releasing this plaited sorrow and outrage.

But I don’t want to say this aloud, of course. Having people treat me like a real, full-bodied adult again instead of a walking tragedy is better than I could have ever hoped for. The freedom of being in a room with people who don’t cease their conversations because they contain death, don’t eye me with wet, dewy pity. We take such small things for granted when we’re not steeped in our own mourning.

I lick my fingers and dive into the bag for another chip.

I didn’t think about how cold it would be up here, even though I’d just been in the Hudson Valley a few weeks prior. Here, it’s a different kind of winter, one that sinks deep in your bones, makes you worship the scraps of faded sunlight that hover for a short time before being swallowed by the clouds.

I stamp my feet for warmth near the train station, waiting for my cab to pull up. For reasons unknown, the coffee shop attached to the station is closed, the station’s driveway desolate of passengers and cars. I seemed to be the only one who got off at this stop.

Finally a mustard yellow car stops at the curb, and I slide in. The seats are so worn that there’s duct tape covering slits in the fabric. All I can think of, though, is the heat blasting through the vent in the back.

“We don’t get many out-of-towners this time of year,” says the driver, a middle-aged man with copper-colored hair and neatly clipped nails. “You visiting family?”

I duck my head closer to the vent, inhaling the air puffing out of it. “My parents lived here when I was a child. I’m visiting their old house. So yeah, I guess you could say I’m visiting family.”

The driver clucks his tongue. “That house is a beauty. Right on the lake, lots of land. When you said the address, I knew I’d heard it before, dropped off other folks around there. It really is a gorgeous piece of property, and I would know. I used to be a roofer myself, back in the day. Was retired, but then my wife had some medical issues, and so I started driving the cab. We don’t have Uber or none of that up here, fortunately for me.” I let him prattle on, slightly disturbed that the address is so well-known. But it’s a small town. I shouldn’t let my habituated big-city anonymity make me anxious.