We finished the washing up in the specific comfortable silence of two people who have just made a small ordinary decision together and are quietly pleased about it. Not because of the decision itself — though I found, turning it over, that I was genuinely pleased about the decision itself. But because of what it meant. That we were thinking about after. That after existed in our minds as a real place we were moving toward rather than a concept we were hoping for.
After.
With a medium dog.
Sebastian drained the sink and dried his hands and leaned against the counter looking at the garden through the window — dark now, the wisteria a shadow along the south wall, the roses invisible but present the way things are present when you know they are there.
“It was a good week,” he said. “Undern
