Chapter 8 — You’re Jealous

At 12:40 Monique was on speakerphone while I stood at my counter with her printed message in my hand.

Behind her voice a pot lid rattled; she was making lunch, performing ordinariness, the way you do when you have decided a thing is fine.

I know that sound because I make it myself sometimes — the deliberate ordinariness, the dinner being cooked, the small domestic noises arranged around a conversation you do not want to have.

Monique was performing normalcy for both of us, and the performance told me more than any confession could have, because a person who is genuinely untroubled does not need to stage the evidence of it.