“Before you spend one more minute crying over him,” Farah said, “check your bank accounts.”

I almost said it wasn’t the time.

But I opened the joint statements anyway, the last six months of them, and the crying stopped on its own, because what was on that screen did not leave room for it.

I have thought a lot, since, about the difference between Farah and Valentina, because that night laid it bare.

They had both known me for over a decade.

But when I showed up on Farah’s doorstep at midnight, wrecked, she did not perform sympathy or make it about the drama of it.