I had no idea, none at all, that I was driving toward the moment my whole understanding of the past year, and of my husband, and of what love is actually for, would come apart and be built again into something truer.

It is strange to me now, remembering how happy I was in that car.

I had it exactly backwards.

I thought I was the one bringing comfort, bringing a small sweet surprise to a man who worked too hard, and I felt generous and clever and tender, imagining his delight.

I did not know that I was the one about to be ambushed, that within the hour a stranger’s kindness and a colleague’s tears would take the floor out from under my whole life.

The last truly innocent moments I ever had were spent smiling to myself at red lights, rehearsing the mock scolding I would give my husband for not eating properly.