And there it was, the thing he’d been wanting to tell me. Just meet one person. Just one. Find a friend, a coworker, a boss. One person to trust. Of course, I knew it took only one person to lie, to smear your name, to blow up your life. I couldn’t imagine “making friends,” not anymore. Michael probably just wanted me to find someone to take the pressure off him. But that wasn’t fair either. That’s something else I’d learned—trauma could bring out the worst in the wounded. I wasn’t as nice as I used to be.

I am excited about the new house. I am excited about the move. I will find a job. I will make new friends. Everything will be fine. Michael loves me, and I love him.

Looking past Michael, I saw the box sitting on the closet floor like an anchor to our old life. “That’s one of mine. Leave it. I’ll deal with it later.”

His mouth tightened, and I knew how much he wanted to tape that box up and throw it out.

But the past couldn’t be sealed up so neatly. Not then, and not now.

Once Michael went to work the next morning, the house was quiet in a way our apartment in Jersey had never been. I could hear the air conditioner, but it only made the vaulted ceiling and open floor plan seem more cavernous.

I’d put the kitchen together—our small selection of pots and pans, our matching set of mugs, everything in the right place ready for our new life. Four chairs were arranged neatly around the kitchen table. I’d broken down the empty boxes and stacked their flat carcasses by the front door.

There was plenty to do, too much and not enough. Boxes of sophisticated professional clothes in the bedroom, pieces of the self-created uniform I’d worn at the museum, and boxes of books in the study, building blocks of my capsized career. And we had artwork, still flat-packed, ready to hang. Our bare walls were all painted the same silvery gray, made warmer by the greige undertones.

But I didn’t feel the warmth, not even when sunlight broke through the window treatments left by the previous owner. Someday I should replace the heavy double-layered fabric with something lighter, more contemporary, or at least more cheerful. Michael had draped a multicolored blanket crocheted by my grandmother over the back of our sleek gray sofa. Maybe he was trying to brighten things up too.

My phone buzzed. Mom calling to check in. I sat on the sofa and answered.

“How are you?” she asked. Just like Michael, everything she said had an undertone of pity.