For all the support I got from my older sister, I might as well have been a singleton. Mom was too up and down mood-wise to be of use when Dad drank and went hunting for prey. I learned to value solitude because alone meant safe. Inherently a friendly child, I learned to be sociable and genuinely empathic, but more often than not any group of people makes me feel alienated.

Two people like that and you can see how it would take time to work out Relationship 101.

I believe Robin and I have done a pretty good job. We’ve been together for a long time, are faithful without strain, love each other madly, press each other’s erotic buttons. All that bliss has been ruptured twice by breakups, neither of which I understand fully. During one separation, Robin got pregnant by another man. The pregnancy and her time with him ended badly. I’ve worked with children my entire adult life but have never been a father. Robin and I haven’t talked about that in ages.

I hope she doesn’t spend too much time wondering.

I drove home thinking about tiny bones, a life barely lived, a nurse who could be anything between saint and monster. I still hadn’t figured out what to divulge when I reached the top of the old bridle path that snakes up to our property.

To look at the house, free of trim or artifice, high white stucco walls sliced into acute angles where the trees don’t shroud, you’d think emotionally distant people live here. The original structure, the one I bought for myself as soon as I had a bit of money, was tiny, rustic, all wood and shingle and quirk and creak. A psychopath burned it down and when we rebuilt we were looking for change, maybe a fortress.

Inside, matte-finished oak floors, comfortable, slouchy furniture, and art biased toward pretty rather than politics combine to warm things up. The square footage isn’t vast but it’s more than two people and one small dog need, and my footsteps echo when I cross the living room and head up the skylit corridor to my office.

Robin’s truck was parked out front but no sign of her in the house, so she was out in her studio, working. I postponed a bit, checking email, paying bills, scanning news sites and reassuring myself that the world continued to spin with all the logic of a grand mal seizure.

By the time I poured a mug full of coffee in the kitchen and walked down to the garden where I stopped to feed the koi, I was still unresolved about what to say.

“Baby bones,” I told the fish. “Don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.”

They slurped in gratitude.