They give you a reason that ends the conversation.

I looked from one message to the other, the old one ending in a request for money, the new one ending in a reason they would not be coming, and he was right, they were built the same way, each one closing the door gently on the same hinge.

Sarah, he said, and he put his thumb against the screen, when did they start talking to you like you were a bill collector.

I don’t know, I said, and it was the truth, because it had happened the way the worst changes always happen, not on any one day, but a degree at a time, until the temperature of the whole thing had changed and I had gone on standing in it, adjusting, telling myself it had always been this warm.