He saw the listing on a Tuesday morning.
It came through in a newsletter he had subscribed to years ago and mostly ignored. He was going through email before his nine o'clock when it appeared: a Verdi program next month, the same opera house, the same company. Before marriage. Before any of it. When they had been, two people were still learning what the other one was.
He remembered it specifically.
She had been wearing something green. Not formal green, event green, but the particular green of someone who had bought something because she liked it. He had noticed this without turning his head. He had also noticed that she was not watching the stage. She was watching the conductor.
He had been twenty-nine and had not known what to do with it.
He knew what it meant now.
He picked up his
