ELENA

I walked away from him while I still had the nerve, down the hall and down the stairs without looking back, because if I’d looked back I’d have seen his face and lost all of it.

By the time I reached the bottom step I’d stopped shaking. Something had settled in me up in that room, somewhere between his silence and the door I’d left open behind me, and it wasn’t grief anymore. Grief was what I’d done on the floor an hour ago. This was colder than that, and steadier, and it ...