The soup was reconnaissance.

The grave was strategy.

The hand-holding was an investment expected to return a signature.

She had reached into the most private, most defenseless corners of a lonely man’s heart, and she had done it not out of any feeling at all but the way a locksmith works, method by method, taking the impression, cutting the key, testing the fit.

I do not think I will ever fully trust warmth again the way I used to, and I grieve that, because it means she took something from me that no settlement can repay.

But I have decided, stubbornly, not to let her have the whole of it.