My husband, my strong and steady husband who had held the lives of strangers in his hands without his own ever shaking, was sitting on the edge of our bed in the middle of the night with his whole body quietly coming apart.

“Marcus?” I said, my voice thick with sleep and sudden fear.

He went still.

And then he did the thing he had been doing, I would later understand, for six months.

He wiped his face quickly with the heels of his hands, and he composed himself, and he turned around wearing an expression that was almost, but not quite, ordinary.

“Rough night,” he said.