These are exactly the words she was about to utter. She’s not sure if he’s still talking about the healthcare bill, though he’s no longer looking at her. Her voice cracks as she seeks to confirm: “What isn’t going to work?”

“I don’t think you’ll ever be ready for a child.”

She swallows all the words she practiced on the drive up the hill. She hadn’t expected him to give up so readily. He’s making it easy for her, as he’s always done. She should be relieved, but she’s surprised at how much the words hurt, coming from him.

“I agree,” she says, as if they’re discussing weekend plans.

They turn their attention back to the food. Bill returns to his pet subject. The healthcare bill will be the best thing since FDR’s New Deal, he says. She lets his voice lull her. Bill’s confidence is calming, comforting, as always. She reaches across the table to take his hand, and this time he doesn’t draw back. They finish the food, one hand clasped in each other’s, like lovers.

When dinner is done, they clean up and put away the dishes. They finish the bottle of wine and open another.

“Stay,” he says, when they’ve finished that one too. “You can’t drive back like this.”

She’s glad he asked her to stay. She’d been thinking she’d have to call for a cab if he didn’t, though technically this is still her home. They change into their nightclothes and fall into a bed they haven’t shared in two months, holding each other as they fall asleep.

But the wine, after the initial soporific effect, wears off, and Seema wakes up earlier than she normally would, restless with the beginnings of a hangover. She gets out of bed without waking Bill, opens the door to the fire escape, and lets herself out onto the narrow landing.

She stands high above the city. From here she could see the entire sweep of the bay if not for the fog. Instead, there is no city, no sky. There is only this—the shivering fabric of her nightdress, the wet fingers of the fog, the landing’s cold steel rungs pressing up against the soles of her feet. The earth and the sky pass in and through her.

Whenever the fog thins she can make out the house down the hill. A light is on, and through the window, two figures—indistinct, like ghosts—sit at a table, cups in their hands. But it is herself she sees as unreal, insubstantial—a wandering sprite, enviously peeping in on the warm reality of other people’s homes.