The GPS and time stamp of the affair were the hour between Dana arriving at Toaster for the night shift—relieving the day cook and waitress—and the arrival of Felipé, who worked the front of the restaurant at night while Dana cooked and also did the baking for the day to come. Or on the other end, the nights when Cate, sleepless anyway, would drive over to Toaster at six in the morning to grab a cup of coffee, then a bit of making out in the freezer before Dana was expected home. Once in a while Dana engineered a situation where she could get away to meet Cate at her apartment or workshop.

From the first, Cate wanted more of Dana than she was ever able to get. It wasn’t a good position, always wanting more. This never brings out the best in anyone. It went on until Cate stopped liking herself. At that point she thought: Enough. Stopping was harder than she’d imagined it would be, but she did it, and she has stuck to it.

But even right now, having successfully come through over a year’s withdrawal, and with her good reasons still marshaled, Cate’s resolve has drifted into a small fantasy in which Dana suggests a cup of coffee. Then the small but peppy sex mouse in Cate’s brain starts scrambling around to think what coffee shop nearby might have a single-occupant bathroom. She feels sensible for confining the fantasy in this way. Running with it would allow visualizing just a stall, in any restroom, even one in a scary park bathroom with sheet-metal mirrors and broken locks and puddled floors. Worst, she can tell that Dana, standing inside Cate’s silence, has sensed the existence, if not the particulars, of the fantasy.

Sailor comes whipping by. Cate doesn’t bother telling Dana that he’s her dog. Dana doesn’t need to know her dog. Dana no longer has any sort of purchase on her. Cate turns back to look hard at the horizon where the lake is steaming up a little, the last of the recent rain lifting off. She hates how much she feels exactly now, when she would have hoped to feel nothing.

Sailor loops around, then jumps up to put his front paws on Dana’s shoulders and bounce off. Of course he’d like her.

“Could we get together tonight, late? You know, to talk. I’m so flipped about everything, our country. My mind folds in on itself when I try to make sense of what just happened. And my own life without you. I need to talk. Jody’s out of town. Her sister’s having a lump removed from the back of her neck.”

“Cancer?”

“No, it’s some better kind of lump. A cyst maybe? But her sister wants Jody’s support anyway. Their family is basically one group hug.”