Over about forty minutes she told me, in pieces, with gaps, going back over things, the way a person does at one in the morning on the first day.

Her car is a 2016 Civic with ninety-four thousand miles on it.

We bought it together in the March of 2023.

I put down four thousand two hundred and she put in two thousand six hundred that she had saved over fourteen months at a veterinary clinic on Thunderbird where she works the front desk four afternoons a week.

The title is in her name.

Hers alone.