Tell me what you need.”

I looked past the window at the hard bright edges of the skyline.

“Three things,” I said.

“Tonight.

He closed that door himself, Tamsin.

I’m only deciding when to open it.”

I should say something here about the dry eyes, because I have thought about them a great deal since, and I think they frightened the nurses more than any weeping would have.

A woman in my situation is supposed to cry, and when she does not, people assume she is in shock, or that something in her has broken in a way that has not surfaced yet.