She supposed she wasn’t the only person who daydreamed these glimpses: other children, other husbands, other lives. She dreamed of the children she might have had, if this or that pregnancy had taken, if this or that man had been hers.

Sarah once met a woman in the support group who was significantly older than she, and though the woman looked tired and sad, she also looked stylish. Sarah remembered a blush-colored bouclé sweater and what solace Sarah had taken in the care the woman clearly showed herself. She’d been frank about cutting off her daughter. “I’m done,” she’d told Sarah. “It’s over. She’s not getting any more money. I’ve already given; do you know what I mean? I gave at the office. I gave at the door.”

Where was she? Where was Sarah?

I’m with our daughter again, Matthew. And everyone calls you Matt except for me.

You’re making lush short films that no one will see because it’s the dawn of the 1990s and there’s funding and interest and no Internet for the foreign man on the subway to ignore, and I am with our daughter. I’m sitting on the pine floors of our kitchen in Prospect Heights a million or twenty-four years ago after feeding the baby breakfast, and I’m seeing the grooves in the honey-colored planks, the bits of food that are stuck in those grooves that I need to remove with a special knife kept specifically for this purpose. I’m with our daughter—twelve, thirteen years later—different apartment, different world—as she laughs so hard at the TV that I think something is wrong with her (could something be wrong with her?) and then I start laughing, too, because her laugh is contagious and, yes, just a touch scary, the way the best laughs are.

She rose from the bench and started walking. Maybe she was being followed. She walked faster, developing a stitch in her side. If Matthew had just texted her, it meant he’d finished his long run, which he did most Friday afternoons when he wasn’t on a shoot. Despite the side stitch she began jogging toward where he usually finished, suddenly eager—frantic—to see him.

HE WAS STRETCHING HIS CALVES, standing on the curb, lowering one foot at a time. He looked strong in his gray running tank, but when he stopped midstretch and took a swig from his water, ran a hand over his unshaven face, he looked instantly exhausted. Unsettled, she tried to imagine what she’d think if she saw him right then for the first time.

He was looking into the park and didn’t see her until she was almost at his side. His face lit up; it did.

“Surprise,” she said. She wasn’t being followed. She felt both relieved to realize this and also a bit silly.

“What are you doing here?”

“I know it’s pathetic, but I always need an excuse to get myself to the park.”

“So I’m your excuse?” He put his hand on her neck.