He worked eleven-hour days at a firm downtown that did something with logistics infrastructure that Maya never fully understood.

He came home.

He ate dinner with his son every night at six-thirty, and talked to him, kindly and steadily, about his day, and did not require anything back.

He was, she thought, one of the loneliest people she had ever met.

On a Tuesday in the sixth week, Maya dropped a mug.

It was a plain brown ceramic mug with a chip in the handle, and it was the only object in that kitchen that looked like it had been chosen by a person rather than a decorator, and it came off the counter edge because her sleeve caught it, and it broke into four pieces on the tile.

And Maya Sterling, who had not cried once in six weeks — not on the balcony, not at the clinic, not in the bus terminal — put both hands on the counter and started to cry so hard she couldn’t stand up straight.