The deeper things would take longer, for both of them, and we had good people helping — Maya had a therapist she liked, and Clara still checked in, and Elena was learning, slowly, that she was allowed to set the terrible weeks down.

She’d moved out of that house, which was being sold, and into my guest house while she found her feet, and the strangest, best thing had come out of the whole nightmare, which was that there were no more petty arguments between her and me, no more cold silences, no more scorekeeping.

We weren’t husband and wife.

We were something the marriage had never quite managed to make us: partners, real ones, in the one project that had always mattered more than our grievances.

I don’t want to make it sound simpler or prettier than it was.

Elena had nightmares, the loud kind that brought me across the yard some nights to knock softly on the guest house door.