I stared at it, hanging there in its metal coil, one turn short of dropping.

And that — not the affair, not my father’s face, not the closing door — that was the thing that nearly finished me.

I had absorbed betrayal and rejection without breaking, and I stood in a fluorescent waiting room and felt tears come up hot and sudden over a trapped granola bar, because it was the exact size of thing I could not fix, on the exact morning I could not afford to fail at anything.

A woman waiting behind us reached into her purse and pulled out a bar of her own and crouched down to hand it to Caleb.

“These machines rob desperate people,” she said, straightening back up, “because they know nobody in here has the time or the fight to argue with a coil.”

Her name was Joyce Keller.