She offered that part herself before I could ask for it.”

And there it was.

The same machine, running the same program it has run since 1998.

A thing of enormous value, offered warmly, with a hook set so deep in it that you cannot get the meat off the bone.

Everything in me stood up at once.

I opened my mouth to say *absolutely not,* and what came out instead was nothing, because I heard Ben’s voice at my kitchen table at one in the morning two years earlier.