Get some rest.

I have an executive meeting.”

The moment the door clicked shut behind him, I wept.

But I want to be precise about what I was weeping for, because it was not for Bruno, and it was not for my marriage, both of which I understood in that moment to be already dead.

I wept for the woman I had been for ten years — the loyal, enduring, sacrificing woman who had genuinely believed that absorbing cruelty without complaint was the same thing as love.

I wept for her because she had just died too, there in that hospital bed, and because I was the one who had to bury her.