“Anything else I can help you with today?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“That covers it all.”

By noon I was standing in our apartment kitchen, setting the brown cardboard box down on the Formica table.

Helen sat in her chair by the radiator, slowly rubbing her right knuckles with her left thumb.

She looked at the cardboard box, then up at my face.

“He put you on leave, then?” she asked.

“Unpaid administrative leave,” I said.