She sat in a doctor’s office at thirty-four and reported herself as the malfunction.

The doctor prescribed something and suggested counseling, and Evelyn went home and told Douglas about the appointment, and Douglas was extremely supportive.

He was so supportive that he came to the next one.

And in the next one, he explained — kindly, to a doctor, in front of his wife — that Evelyn had always been a worrier, that her mother had been the same, that she had been under strain since the twins, and that he was keeping an eye on it.

“And the doctor believed him,” Evelyn said to me in that corridor.

“Of course she did.