He came home at seven thirty.
I heard the front door and I heard his footsteps in the hall and I heard him stop outside the library door for a moment before continuing to his room. I sat in the chair by the window where the evening light had long since faded and I looked at my hands in my lap and I thought about every version of this conversation I had rehearsed through the course of the day and how none of them felt adequate now that the moment had actually arrived.
I had spent the day doing ordinary things with extraordinary difficulty.
I had made tea and not tasted it. I had opened my laptop and closed it again. I had stood at the window for long stretches watching the city move below without seeing any of it. I had called my mother and listened to her voice and said everything was f
