The ring could wait.

The paperwork could wait.

In the morning I would buy a burner phone with Diana, and I would keep my voice low and my face pleasant, and the yellow tabs on Arthur’s preliminary forms would stay exactly where they were.

Julian rolled toward me in his sleep and laid one arm across my waist.

I lay still and counted the nine days down to nothing, and on the ceiling the streetlight threw the shadow of the maple across the plaster, and I didn’t sleep until the shadow moved.

Helga had the patio table laid before we arrived, three cakes under a glass dome and the good cups already out at one o’clock.