We came so close to spending our one life politely estranged in the same house, two good managers, two lonely strangers, growing old side by side and utterly alone.

And we didn’t.

I think about the almost more than I should, on the good nights, out on the porch with his hand in mine — how close it was, how near we came to living the whole rest of it in that cold, courteous silence, each of us certain the other had stopped loving us, each of us wrong, neither of us willing to be the first to check.

If the shoebox had stayed on the shelf.