His reply was courteous.

We divided the small shared purchases and closed the joint savings account we’d opened for the honeymoon.

It was ordinary paperwork, unexpectedly painful in its finality.

When I turned off the account notification, I felt both sad and relieved.

A few months earlier, I’d imagined that any new home had to contain a husband and perhaps another baby before it could be called complete.

Now the kitchen table was crowded with homework, fruit peels, and construction-paper wings from an elaborate butterfly project.