There was a maple tree in the little backyard that turned a furious orange in October, and a swing I hung from its lowest sturdy branch, and a fence Lily helped me paint a cheerful, slightly uneven white.

It was, by every measure Julian would have used, a step down in the world.

And it was the first home I had lived in as an adult where I could breathe all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

I had not understood, during the marriage, how much of myself I’d been holding carefully in reserve.

How much quiet management the days had required — the monitoring of Julian’s moods, the smoothing, the maintaining of the beautiful surface of things.

I had mistaken the effort of it for the ordinary effort of a life, the way you can live beside a constant low noise so long that you forget it’s there, and only notice it when it finally stops.