I watched it happen, watched the timeline do to him what it had done to me in the parking garage, watched a man’s whole understanding of his life quietly rearrange itself across a diner table.

He had sold his motorcycle, he told me, the one thing he owned that was just for him, to pay down debts Rebecca had sworn were for the baby.

He had worked sixty-hour weeks for months.

He had done it gladly, because he thought he was building a family.

“They’re using both of us,” I said.

“They have been for a long time.”