“But…why?” It was the only word he could think of. Over and over again in his head: why, why, why? “Are you bored? Do you want to go back to school? Get a job?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I have the girls to take care of.”

“Then why?”

“Why not?” said Kate. “It looked like fun.” She took a sip of her tea. “Walter, I know it’s dangerous. I’m not an idiot. I just needed, I don’t know.” She put the mug down, and it made a solid clunk against the wood. A good, heavy, comforting sound. “I needed something.”

Walter sat down across from her. “I know I haven’t been around much,” he began. But Kate’s eyes had lost focus, and she leaned back in her chair, licking her lips.

“It’s okay, Walter,” she said, and he felt the words sink into his skin like a salve. “Everything is okay.”

Maybe it was okay. Maybe he was making too big of a deal out of it. It was a bit of fun – she just took it too far. He wanted her to be happy. The only thing he had ever wanted was for her to be happy. But he was beginning to believe it wasn’t possible.

“You can’t just go jumping off bridges. Those girls need you.”

“I could die at any minute, Walter. I don’t have to jump off a bridge for that to happen.” Something dark descended on Walter. I feel like God has forgotten about me, he heard her saying. Like I was supposed to die that day, and no one up there ever bothered to double check that I had.

“Promise me, Kate,” he said, taking her hand. “Promise me you won’t do anything to unnecessarily risk your life.”

She stared past him, out the kitchen window. “I promise.” But her voice sounded far away, and Walter was never really sure that she meant it. A promise from Kate, he had learned, was like the promise of summer: it would arrive sometime, but you never knew for sure when, or what form it would take.

Weeks went by, and Walter let his guard down. Maybe the worst was over. Then one day he came home from a government research trip to find a stranger sleeping in the guest room.

“Who is that upstairs?” Walter asked Kate, who was in the kitchen preparing a pot roast. The meat sat on the counter, bleeding into a bed of paper towels while she chopped potatoes.

“Oh, that’s Shawn,” she said. “He lives here now.” She put the knife down and scooped the potatoes into the pot, and then moved on to decimating an onion. Kate could chop onions without shedding a tear. Walter had always thought it was magic, but now, watching her, he wondered if instead it pointed to some kind of basic human deficiency.

“Kate, what the hell is going on?”