There was no driver waiting at the curb, because I did not keep one; there never had been, in my own life, whatever Damian had preferred the world to assume.

There was no one at home demanding an audience for the day’s grievances, no mood to read the instant I came through the door, no careful calculation of how to arrange my face and my news so as not to set something off.

There was only the evening, and the walk home through it, and the quiet that had stopped being a thing I endured and started being a thing I owned.

The air was crisp and cool and smelled of salt water and the first turning of the autumn leaves.