At the last moment, I find willpower I didn’t know I possessed. I turn off the computer instead. Another family policy: The computer must be turned off before going to bed.

A computer is a portal, you know, an entry point into your home. Or maybe you don’t know.

Soon enough, you’ll understand.

Ten o’clock, I leave the kitchen light on for Jason. He hasn’t called, so apparently it’s a busy night. That’s okay, I tell myself. Busy is busy. It seems we go longer in silence all the time. These things happen. Especially when you have a small child.

I think of February vacation again. The family getaway that was either the best or the worst thing that happened to us, given your point of view. I want to understand it. Make some sense of my husband, of myself. There are things that once done can’t be undone, things that once said can’t be unsaid.

I can’t fix any of it tonight. In fact, I haven’t been able to fix any of it for weeks, which has been starting to fill me with more and more dread. Once, I honestly believed love alone could heal all wounds. Now I know better.

At the top of the stairs, I pause outside Ree’s door for my final goodnight check. I carefully crack open the door and peer in. Mr. Smith’s golden eyes gaze back at me. He doesn’t get up, and I can’t blame him: It’s a cozy scene, Ree curled in a ball under the pink-and-green flowered covers, sucking her thumb, a tousle of dark curls peeking up from above the sheets. She looks small again, like the baby I swear I had only yesterday, yet somehow it’s four years later and she dresses herself and feeds herself and keeps us informed of all the opinions she has on life.

I think I love her.

I think love is not an adequate word to express the emotion I feel in my chest.

I close the door very quietly, and I ease into my own bedroom, slipping beneath the blue-and-green wedding quilt.

The door is cracked for Ree. The hallway light on for Jason.

The evening ritual is complete. All is as it should be.

I lie on my side, pillow between my knees, hand splayed on my hip. I am staring at everything and nothing at all. I am thinking that I am tired, and that I’ve screwed up and that I wish Jason was home and yet I am grateful that he is gone, and that I’ve got to figure out something except I have no idea what.

I love my child. I love my husband.

I am an idiot.