Nothing is clear or easy to me anymore, I said to my husband, and he told me, still in that malformed voice, that he had something important to tell me. He said he would leave a letter with the doorman of his (not our) building, and that letter would tell me what I was supposed to do, it would outline what remained of the life I’d left, and what of it I could still claim. He breathed in and balanced his voice on what seemed to be the last stable edge of himself.