The small things went into the ledger.

The way Victoria had a key to every room in the house, including ours, and used it.

The way she rearranged our kitchen when we were out, so that I could never quite find anything, so that the house never quite became mine.

The way Julian would be easy and warm and himself right up until his phone lit with her name, and then something in him would flatten, go careful, go back to being ten years old.

The way she asked, always lightly, always with a laugh, where I had been, who I had seen, when I would be home.

The way friends of mine who came to dinner once were, somehow, subtly discouraged from coming again — a comment here, a coolness there, until they stopped calling and I couldn’t have said exactly when.