“I am, but it’s not what you think.” I’m jealous of their ease. I’m jealous of his mental health, of her physical health. “Why do you have to struggle every single day and he doesn’t? Why does Sari get to live when Glenn’s going to die?” It’s the first time I’ve said this out loud, and it only makes me feel worse, not better. “Why do some people get to be healthy and others don’t? It’s not fair.” The words come out of me in a low growl, and then in the deep howl of a wounded animal. “It’s not fair.”

Gary exhales and his shoulders slump. The day has gutted him, too, but somehow he is still standing. I cry until I can’t anymore.

“I want to go home,” I whisper, wiping my nose. But I know that’s not possible. There’s still another day of the seminar, and the minute Sari sees what I’ve done, she’ll post about it on social media. I’m paralyzed with shame and fear.

Gary looks down at all our stuff, then at the clock on the desk—it’s almost 10:00 P.M.—and then out the window. It’s pitch-black out, and he can just make out the car under a big white rising moon. He picks up all of our bags at once and, with his free hand, lifts me by the elbow. It seems we’re leaving early.

* * *

We tiptoe down the stairs and edge around the kitchen door. Andy is clearing the table and Gregory and Sari are drinking wine and talking in hushed tones—their practice of “checking in” with each other after students have left for the night, both of them glowing from the activity of creativity, from the apparent joy they take in the community of artists and writers they’ve built; in the people who come and go from their house struggling to express themselves. All I feel is loneliness—every cell in my body and brain is empty and devoid of what’s supposed to connect me to the rest of the world—and to Gary—and I am full of a strange new grief, that of a nonjoiner who suddenly sees what they’ve been missing out on all these years: community, connection, the quiet comfort of others.

But there is no time. With the stealth movements of a scene from a Bourne movie, Gary signals for me to follow him down a few more stairs, into the “car-barn,” otherwise known as a garage. There are the three cars—the SUV that Sari drove to the cheese store, the BMW Gary refused to drive, and the white Prius Gregory drove earlier. He takes a set of keys off a nail on the wall and pops open the Prius’s trunk, then loads our bags in. He motions for me to get into the car, and then he does, and, with a press of the “start” button, the dashboard lights up. Gary turns off the interior lights and the headlights and backs out of the garage without a sound. In our perfect battery-operated getaway vehicle we float silently down the lawn all the way to the Volvo.