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too, so Michael wouldn’t have to put back on his suit and torn shirt. Once he got out of the hospital, he probably wouldn’t want any reminders of what had happened today. On the way out, I hesitated, then grabbed Michael’s laptop off his office desk. He’d probably be demanding it within a few hours.
    I put the bag on the passenger’s seat of my car and was pulling out of the driveway when my cell phone rang. I recognized the incoming number and pressed speakerphone.
    “Hey, Raj,” I said, relieved to hear a friendly voice. Raj was one of Michael’s former business school professors, and since he’d joined the company, he’d become close to both of us.
    “Julia,” he greeted me in his lovely Indian accent. “Quite an afternoon.”
    “We’ve all had better ones,” I agreed as I programmed the name of George Washington University Hospital into my GPS. I was too shaken to trust myself to find it without help. “But the main thing is, Michael’s fine.”
    “Thank God for that,” Raj said. He paused. “I hate to bother you.”
    “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m on my way to the hospital now.”
    “Oh.” A strange tone crept into Raj’s voice. “You haven’t seen Michael yet?”
    There it was again: that glimmer of—anxiety? confusion?—that everyone who’d come into contact with Michael since his cardiac arrest seemed to experience.
    “No, no, I saw him,” I said. “I just ran home to get him a change of clothes.”
    “How …” Raj cleared his throat and began again. “How was he feeling?”
    “I think he was looped up on something,” I said. “He was definitely calmer than usual.” I gave a little half laugh, but Raj didn’t join me.
    “I was there, you know,” he said. “When it happened. I was at the other end of the table, and I’d just turned my back to fill up my coffee cup. I didn’t see him fall, but I heard him hit the floor.”
    Raj didn’t say anything else, and I wondered why he’d called. It was almost as if he was waiting for me to volunteer something.
    “I’ll tell Michael you phoned,” I finally said.
    “Please do,” Raj said. “I’m here for whatever either of you need. Anything at all.”
    “Thanks,” I said. I was about to hang up when Raj’s voice stopped me.
    “Julia?” he asked. “Did Michael … say anything at the hospital?”
    “Like what?” I asked. I pulled to a stop at a red light and looked down at the phone, feeling icy fingertips tickling my spine.
    “Just checking. It’s nothing.” His voice changed; grew more forceful. “He seemed a little disoriented, that’s all. Call me anytime,” Raj said again. “I’ll have my cell phone on all night.”
    I pushed Disconnect, and as I crossed the border from Virginia into D.C., I turned up the volume on my Puccini CD, trying to drown out the troublesome thoughts buzzing in my head.

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    Five
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    SO HOW DID MICHAEL and I get from there to here, from being inseparable to becoming near strangers? There isn’t a single moment I can hold up and turn around, like one of those prehistoric insects suspended in a chunk of amber, and say, Do you see it? That’s it; that’s the precise second when everything changed for Michael and me . No, our marriage was more like spending an afternoon at the beach while the tide receded. You could be lying right there on the soft sand and not even notice the microscopic changes—the waves pulling back, inexorably pulling back—while the sun warmed your back and the happy shouts of children filled your ears. Then you’d look up from the last page in your novel and blink, feeling disoriented, wondering how the ocean had moved so far away and when everything around you had changed.
    By the time my husband collapsed at work, he and I hadn’t talked—I mean really talked, one of our all-night heart-to-hearts—in years, which is crazy, because talking was all we used to do. Well, maybe not all. We were teenagers, which meant we were so overflowing with