The one I told you about.

The Dubai connection.”

She sounded pleased that I remembered, and I did remember, because Monique had talked about this man for weeks in the particular voice she used when she had decided to be happy about something before the facts were in.

My sister is thirty-five and she has spent most of her adult life a half step behind the life she believes she is owed — the better apartment, the man who makes ordinary days feel like an occasion, the one big chance that finally lets her stop counting.

I love her.