Nora is often accused of being rude—but people are wrong. She’s just focused on what matters, so she doesn’t have time to accommodate everyone’s feelings. Most people exist in a state of fluttery inattention, chopping up vegetables for dinner while watching the news while helping their kids figure out an algebra problem while answering texts while worrying about the bills. She prefers to do one thing at a time. And she gives that one thing everything she has. That’s why she dislikes music except as a pure listening experience. How can she drive a car, focusing on the traffic weaving through the lanes all around her, while listening to the radio? She can’t possibly take in the speed limit, road signs, turn signals, flashing lights, and congestion and analyze the lyrics, appreciate the harmony and melody, isolate each instrument, imagine it as sheet music, and compare the song’s construction to a rare B-side from the late seventies.

If she hung up on you midconversation or failed to make eye contact or say thank you, that’s because something more important is occupying her mind. If she were a superhero, her power would be the ability to concentrate, to go to a place of singular focus most people didn’t understand.

Jack has always made this impossible. When they were married, he would drive her nuts: singing or whistling while doing dishes, reading aloud sections of novels or newspaper articles he found interesting, watching television while grading papers. He was a perpetual multitasker, always doing more than one thing at once, often poorly.

Now he’s back at it again. “Did you hear me? Nora? Earth to Nora?”

She realizes two things simultaneously. She wants to hear more about Mia. And she won’t be able to concentrate until he shuts up. So she gives him her full attention. “I heard you. What did she say about the dark?”

“There was a thunderstorm one night. She called out for us, and I ended up lying in bed with her for an hour.” On his way to the couch he messes up a stack of paper that she immediately neatens. He plops down, sips his coffee, and creases his face at its bitterness. “I tried to calm her down by boring her. Making things less scary with science. I talked about how to calculate the distance of a lightning strike by counting from the sight of the flash”—here he raises a finger and wrinkles his forehead as if listening—“to the sound of the thunder. That got us into a discussion about the speed of light. She said she had a question about this. People were always talking about the speed of light, but what about the speed of dark?