“I’ll do it however you want, Abe. I want to make it better. I don’t want to make it harder.”

“This isn’t about me. It’s her. You mattered to her.”

When he picked me up, his body was hunched over the steering wheel, and he raised his hand gently and gave me a little wave. I got into the passenger seat, leaned over, and put my arms around him. His body didn’t yield. I felt the gearshift digging into my side. We drove in silence across the bridge. We nearly had it to ourselves.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“I won’t be able to give you too much talk. Not about this. Not yet.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I told him. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

“I didn’t apologize. I only said I couldn’t.” Pain had stripped him to his hardest nerves. He drove fast and reckless, swerving into lanes, but his face was rigid. His speed wasn’t about pleasure, flying over the hills of the city at night. It was about getting rid of the distance.

In the middle of the desert we hit an animal on the highway. It could have been a dog or a raccoon. I didn’t even see it crossing. Abe cried, “Oh, shit!” He jerked the wheel right and veered in front of a minivan. There was a honk that seemed to last a whole minute. Abe started laughing beside me.

“Holy shit!” he said. “Did you see it go flying?”

He was laughing harder now, shoulders shaking. “It was really . . . It was like some kind of fucking meteor.”

“Jesus, Abe.”

He clutched the wheel harder. “It was really . . .” His laughing hushed into a wheezing. “It was really something.”

I put my hand on his, on the wheel, over his knuckles.

“I think I need to pull over,” he said. “Just for a second.”

He drove onto a narrow stretch of weedy dirt. We could feel the cars on our left, rattling our seats. I cupped my hands under his chin and pulled his face toward mine. I kissed his mouth. I kept my eyes open. I missed that.

He pulled away, shaking his head. “It’s not …” he said. “It’s not yours.”

He rested his forehead on the steering wheel. The leather must have been sun-hot, but he didn’t flinch. He was sobbing but he didn’t make a sound. I saw it in his shoulders.

Her house was a dump. I don’t know what I was expecting but I wasn’t expecting its open mess: a splay of dirty plastic toys and junked furniture in the yard. There was a couch with all its springs showing. Abe didn’t think it was the right address until I found the number scrawled in paint across the curb. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it’s the one.”