Chapter 11 — A Glass of My Own Wine

I got home to a quiet, well-lit house, and I kicked off my heels by the door and poured myself a glass of chilled white wine, a bottle I had bought myself with my own money for my own pleasure, and I sat down on the sofa with a book I had been meaning to finish for a month.

I was not performing calm for anyone; there was no one there to perform for.

I was simply, actually calm, in a way I had not been before a family dinner or after one in longer than I could remember, and the calm had a texture to it that I kept noticing, like a sound that has stopped, the absence of a hum you did not know was running until it switched off.