I said yes.

And he said: “How long have you known?”

“Since the twenty-eighth of February.”

He worked it out.

I watched him do it — the birthday, the bear cake, his mother’s hand on my arm, April, his jacket in May, eleven Sunday dinners.

And he said: “Seven months.”

“Yes.”

And my husband said, very quietly: “That’s the worst thing anybody’s ever done to me.”