“My wife handles the paperwork,” he’d said, with a little laugh.

“I handle the assets.”

I had said nothing at the time.

I had carried that sentence for four years.

And it kept me remarkably warm now as Darcy slid a single prepared page across her desk toward me.

My wife handles the paperwork.

I handle the assets. I have thought about that line more than almost anything else Camden ever said to me, because it is the whole marriage compressed into eight words.

In his mind it was true, and generously so — he imagined himself the substance of our life and me the administrative wrapping around it.