She walked like a woman who had walked this route a thousand times and had long ago stopped expecting anything good at the end of it.

She stepped into a cramped, windowless room at the end of a row, and through the open door, in a voice suddenly and completely transformed — gentle, warm, almost young — I heard her call out.

“I’m home,” she said.

“I brought you some warm broth.”

I stopped in the doorway, my heart slamming, because the tenderness in her voice made no sense to me.

Lucy and I had never had children.