I began while it still hurt, which is, I suspect, the only way anyone ever actually does it.

So that is what I did.

I sold what I could not bear to keep.

I took a smaller place in a quiet suburb.

And I began, carefully, the long ordinary work of making a home for two where there had been a performance of a home for four.

That is the phrase that stayed with me afterward — a performance of a home.

Because that is what it had been, I could see it clearly now: a beautifully staged production of a happy family, with good lighting and expensive props and a leading man who never broke character, and an audience of exactly one, me, kept in my seat by the quality of the show.