Ansel, for his part, was intensely relieved to be back home. Both Ben and Haily tried to pile on top of him, but he had to hold them off due to the lingering pain in his neck. The tightness—his muscles felt like ropes being torturously twisted—was centralized in his throat, but extended past the hinges of his jaw up to his ears. When you twist a rope, it shortens, and that was how his muscles felt. He stretched his neck, hoping for some chiropractic relief—

SNAP…CRACKLE…POP…

—which nearly doubled him over. The pain wasn’t worth the effort.

Later, Ann-Marie walked in on him in the kitchen as he was replacing her economy-size bottle of ibuprofen in the high cabinet over the stove. He popped six at once, the daily recommended dosage—and was barely able to get them down.

Her fearful eyes drained of all cheer. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, though he was in too much discomfort to shake his head. But best not to worry her. “Just stiffness from the plane. The way my head hung, probably.”

She remained in the doorway, pulling at her fingers. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left the hospital.”

“And how would you have been able to get by?” he shot back, being shorter with her than he’d planned.

SNAP, CRACKLE, AND POP—

“But what if…what if you have to go back in? What if, this time, they want you to stay?”

It was exhausting, having to dismiss her fears at the expense of his own. “I can’t miss any work as it is. You know we’re right on the edge with our finances.”

They were a one-income household in an America of two-income households. And Ansel couldn’t take a second job, because then who would do the grocery shopping?

She said, “You know I…I couldn’t get along without you.” They never discussed her illness. At least, never in terms of it being an illness. “I need you. We need you.”

Ansel’s shoulder nod was more like a bow, dipping at his waist instead of his neck. “My God, when I think about all those people.” He pictured his seatmates from the long flight. The family with three grown children two rows in front of him. The older couple sitting across the aisle, sleeping most of the way, white-haired heads sharing the same travel pillow. The bleached-blond flight attendant who dripped diet soda on his lap. “Why me, you know? Is there some reason I survived?”

“There is a reason,” she said, her hands flat against her chest. “Me.”

Later, Ansel took the dogs back out to their backyard shed. The yard was the main reason they’d bought this house: plenty of play room for the kids and the dogs. Ansel had Pap and Gertie before he’d ever met Ann-Marie, and she had fallen in love with them at least as much as she had him. They loved her back, no conditions. As did Ansel, and as did the kids—although Benjy, the older one, was starting to question her eccentricities here and there. Especially when they caused a conflict with an eight-year-old’s schedule of baseball practices and play dates. Already Ansel could sense Ann-Marie pulling back from him a bit. But Pap and Gertie would never challenge her, so long as she kept overfeeding them. He feared for the kids as they grew up, feared that they might outgrow their mother at too early an age, and never truly understand why she might appear to favor the dogs over them.