But it was more than weight. I’d stopped paying attention. These days, a pair of sweatpants with an old UW–Whitewater jersey was what constituted getting dressed. Not getting dressed was leaving my pajamas on, with a UW–Whitewater jersey. The day before, as if to provide me with a double handful of nothing, the nice young officer from the Portland Police called to say that there hadn’t been a whisper about who’d burned up our car, though she said she’d expected some gossip, “this being a small town.”

The universe doesn’t exist to send you messages, I told myself. Things just happen. They’re part of a pattern, but sometimes, you never get to see the pattern.

“You could try getting away from all this a little bit. You could go skiing with Jep,” Julie said.

“We’re just making it,” I told Julie. “I mean, we’re fine but no extras right now...”

This wasn’t really true. We could afford a nice trip. My comment was just meant to break the chain of the conversation: People always seemed cautious about arguing with a financial motive. Even to my closest friend, I couldn’t admit the truth. What if we came back to a tragedy? What if we were to be punished for relaxing our vigilance? The ineluctable urge I felt to watch Stefan like a newborn, to put the metaphoric mirror to his lips, was stronger than ever.

Jep and Stefan were going away, in fact, to a game in Utah. Since he would be with his father, Stefan applied for and received an exemption from his parole officer: He’d filed a travel plan and created a schedule to check in by phone every day. They would do some real skiing, as there was already plenty of snow in Utah, and a bonus was that Jep’s travel costs were covered by the team budget.

Julie was no fool and she was no stranger to magical thinking.

“So if he goes away, that’s okay but if you go away, that’s dereliction of duty?”

“He won’t be away from Jep,” I said. “That’s what makes it okay.”

“And that’s all there is to it?”