Everyone else in my old life had disappeared when the verdict came.

She had simply moved the appointment.

I have tried, in the years since, to be to other people what she was to me.

It is the highest thing I know how to aim at.

She put the car in gear and glanced at me.

“Where to?” And I watched the rain crawl down the glass for a moment before I answered, because I wanted to say it correctly, the way you say a thing you have promised yourself for seven hundred nights.

“Not yet,” I said.