“Concluded.”

I sat with that word for a long time.

What undid me was not the cruelty of it, exactly, but the administration of it — the folders, the labels, the tidy closing entry, as though three human lives were three completed matters in a filing system.

Dario had not lost his temper and done a terrible thing.

He had opened a document months before he shook my hand and typed out, in advance, the day he intended to end me, the same way a man notes a dentist appointment.

I had spent two years reading his face for love and had never once thought to wonder what was in his files.