Caroline Kim's collection of short stories The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories won the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was long listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Find her at carolinekim.net and @carolinewriting.

One of the first things Lena learned about Stephen was that he didn’t like changes in his environment. Every morning, he ate the same granola from the same chipped bowl, drank coffee from the same stained mug that said Las Cruces! under a fading picture of a church. He also used the same brand of toilet paper, dish detergent, underwear, shampoo, and bathroom cleaner with the allegiance of a mid-century housewife. Lena learned this the way she learned so much about Stephen—by doing it wrong. The first time Stephen took Lena to Target, she chose the wrong brand of toothpaste.

Stephen took the toothpaste out of the cart and put it back on the shelf. “We always buy Colgate,” he said, picking up the red and white box.

“Why?” she asked. “Why not try something different?”

“Because I like this one. It works for me.”

Lena picked up the box Stephen had put back on the shelf. “This one might work better. Maybe it tastes better, keeps your teeth whiter. How would you know?”

“They’re all the same,” Stephen said.

“Aha!” Lena said. “If it’s all the same, what does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” Stephen said, frowning.

“Well, maybe it matters to me, too.” Lena stood her ground.

They surveyed each other, still trying to figure out where all the boundaries were, how far each could be pushed.

“Fine,” Stephen said. “We’ll use separate toothpastes.”

“Fine,” Lena repeated, moving closer to wrap her arms around Stephen’s middle. “We’ll use separate toothpastes.”

Stephen wasn’t used to being hugged in the middle of Target, or being hugged anywhere. He stiffened at first, and then relaxed. He rested his chin on Lena’s head, and said, “Get whatever you want.”

But he didn’t mean it. Walking around Target that day, Lena learned she would have to figure out what was really important to her and what was not. She didn’t care about paper towels or washing machine soap and dryer sheets, crackers, peanut butter, sodas, or light bulbs. But she drew the line at shampoo, bread (she loved the soft white bread that Stephen said was bad for you), coffee (she preferred instant), and apples (she liked Fuji, he liked the tart green ones). They agreed to disagree on these items.

In the car, Lena asked, “Was your wife a mouse?”

“What are you talking about?” Stephen looked at her like she was crazy.

“I mean, did she let you pick out all these things?”

Stephen laughed. “No. Renee was bossy. Everything had to be her way.”

“Uh huh,” Lena said. “And now you get to be Renee, is that it? Now I get to be Stephen?”

Stephen looked at her with a surprised expression. Then he reached over to take her hand. “I’m sorry, Lena. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived with anyone. Give me some time.”

“It’s okay, Stephen. Just please remember that you are living with me, Lena, and I have things I like as well.”

“I’ll try, Lena,” he said, squeezing her hand hard.

. . .

Lena knew people thought she was a mail order bride. Well, it was true, mostly, though no money went to a third party. They simply met online in a corner of the web where older American gentlemen offered a ticket to America in exchange for sex and affection. Lena found out about it when a girlfriend she bumped into on the street announced excitedly that she was moving to Canada. Though at first vague about where she’d met her Canadian boyfriend, when she saw the suspicious look on Lena’s face, she was quick to explain that it was just a friendly site where people found friends outside their own countries. “I’ve always wanted to travel,” she said. “Don’t you, too, Lena? The world is so big.”

But Lena wasn’t stupid. Before she first wandered onto the website, she had to think for a long time about whether she could have sex with a man she found repulsive. No, it was impossible. He could be older, he could be unattractive, but repulsive, no. She had to like something about him—his humor or his voice or that he was kind. His money? Sure, why not. She didn’t want to be a pauper in America. But money as the only reason? No. Lena’s family in Romania was poor but educated. She wasn’t as badly off as some girls from other Eastern European countries who had to lower, or even discard, their standards in order to escape their current desperate straits. Her English was decent, from school classes and bootleg American movies that her boyfriend brought her. Movies like Caddyshack and Fletch. Sometimes even current ones like Titanic. She couldn’t stop thinking about the movie after she saw it, even dreaming at night that she was moving slowly through water. It wasn’t the romance of Jack and Rose that moved her; it was their wish to go to America, to recreate themselves. And not just America. Lena wanted to see everything there was to see. That she couldn’t because she wasn’t born with the means seemed as arbitrary to her as the lines drawing borders between countries.

The boy who gave her American movies was the only boyfriend she’d ever had, a boy she had known since they were thirteen. He had the ridiculous name of Leopold and thought he was a king. At least when he was thirteen. By the time they were twenty-seven, Leopold thought only of dope. Lena left him a hundred times, but kept coming back for the boy who used to love life so much he would shout out her name in the middle of the street—to the trees, to the sky, to the people who thought him mad.

At night, while Leopold was passed out on the bed, thin, rank, a collection of collapsed veins, she video-chatted with Stephen.

“So, what did you do with yourself today?” Lena asked. She and Stephen had been talking for six weeks.

“Well, I went into the office, and got yelled at. That was fun.” He smiled crookedly.

“I’m sorry,” Lena said, putting down her knitting and looking straight into the camera. “I still don’t understand why they’re mad at you but it sucks. It fucking sucks so bad. It’s a royal pain.” Lena’s use of English in Romania ran heavily toward swear words and old idioms.

Lena didn’t understand why Stephen got yelled at; often she didn’t understand what Stephen was talking about. She understood the words he said but when she added them together, they didn’t string together into one idea. They kept shooting out into different tributaries with new people and new complaints in them.

“Michael came to see me. To commiserate he said, though I suspect he actually came to gloat. It’s partly his fault! He could have helped me but didn’t!” Stephen held his head and groaned. “Okay, this is the worst of it, okay, Lena? I don’t want you to think I’m like this all the time. Only most. Not all. Ha ha.”

Lena felt sorry for Stephen. He looked so middle-aged, so tired and discouraged, having a terrible time in his life, and she was young and feeling generous so she unbuttoned her blouse and moved her breasts toward the computer’s camera eye. “Hey, watch out! I’m going to poke your eye out with a nipple!” A giant nipple came at Stephen resolving into black nothingness. Then she pulled away from the camera and pushed her face close. She stuck out her tongue.

“Yeah,” Stephen said. He waited to see if there’d be more.

But Lena did not want to feel cheap. The one time she saw Stephen move his hand to his pants, she put a stop to the show. “No,” she said. “I don’t want that. I’m not a prostitute.” Stephen froze and apologized. She was pleased that she was right to think him decent.

Now she said, “It’s time for me to go to bed. What about you?”

“I’m going to have lunch with a friend, and then I’ll come home and watch TV and heat up a frozen burrito and read and go to bed. It’s really exciting here.”

“Stop being a pessimist,” Lena said. “It’s boring.” She kissed the camera, smudging it.

Stephen finally laughed. “You’re right, Lena. It is boring. I’m boring. Forgive me.”

She shook a fist at him. “I may have to come there and beat you,” she said.

“Would you?” Stephen asked. “Please?”

Lena looked back at Leopold, listened for his shallow breathing, her heart squeezing tight like a wrung rag. The worry was always right there, even in the middle of the calm moments. “Goodnight, Stephen,” she said.

. . .

Until they met at the airport, Lena didn’t realize how tall Stephen was. He was always sitting at his desk when they Skyped. He stood head and shoulders above the waiting crowd holding a sign with her name on it. He was older than she’d thought, too. But she didn’t care; she’d been worried he wouldn’t show up. What if he decided the whole idea of moving a stranger from the other side of the world was crazy? She was so relieved to see him she almost fell into his arms, but Stephen put out his hand like they were two business people meeting for the first time. His big hand, wonderfully warm and dry, enveloped hers.

There had been a moment at immigration when she stiffened, felt suddenly like a criminal. But then she remembered she was simply a human being who wanted to live a full life, who wasn’t about to let the randomness of borders stop her from doing so. It gave her confidence. Besides, Stephen had helped her get a student visa by enrolling her at the small local college where he worked teaching music history classes. But still, as she showed her round-trip ticket to the agent, her hand trembled.

She was glad Stephen held her hand until they saw her big red suitcase sliding down onto the carousel. There was another to match, but a bit smaller. The suitcases had been a gift from her mother. Though disappointed, she understood her daughter’s wish to leave. How many times had she dreamed of more choices? Her husband had stopped acknowledging their daughter altogether.

In the car, Stephen kept turning his head to look at her. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Stephen, you are going to crash,” she said, not really worried. She was too engrossed with how strange everything was, suffused by such bright light. As they drove from the San Francisco airport to Stephen’s small house in Berkeley, her heart lifted at the sight of the water to their right, the crowded houses on the hillside to the left. Though the houses looked small and plain, they were painted in a multitude of colors. Where she came from everything was drab, muted, as if politically her country was against bright colors. The prominent color in her country was a sickly green that made everybody look under the weather. Perhaps it was purposeful. People under the weather did not have much ambition or energy to fight for change.

. . .

“Aren’t you afraid?”

Lena’s friends back home warned her that Stephen might be a serial killer. Or one of those aberrants who eat people. You’re thinking of a movie, she laughed. Hannibal the Cannibal.

Yes, she was afraid. She was afraid of her life never changing. Of living and dying in the same apartment she shared with her grandparents, her parents, and a younger brother. There were no new apartments to be had, so if she got married, she would move in with her husband’s family or he would move in with hers. Eventually her grandparents would die and her parents would move into their room and Lena and her husband would move into her parents’ bedroom. On and on it would go for eternity. No, that was a more frightening fate than living in America with Hannibal the Cannibal.

Besides, Stephen wasn’t a monster. He was just a sad lonely man. 

They had tried to have sex several times in the first few weeks. Each time ended with embarrassing failure. She had tried, closing her eyes in the dark room so she wouldn’t see his stiff shape, coaxing him with her hand, her mouth, to stay hard, turning off her mind and letting her body take over. She thought about the things she liked about him. He was self-contained, not needy as she’d feared. He was tall and lean for his age, and he still had a good amount of hair on his head. His skin was lined but it didn’t matter because he was a man.

Her thoughts drifted toward Leopold. How one person could be the best and the worst. What it felt like to lie in bed with their legs thrown over each other, their faces nose to nose.

Above her, the figure stopped moving. It fell over and turned on the lamp.

Lena blinked at Stephen.

“You weren’t into it,” he said in a resigned way, sitting up. This is what she liked about him. That he didn’t take what she did or didn’t do personally. She wondered if it came from being alone for so long. He lit a pipe he kept next to his bed. Ten years ago he’d started smoking marijuana to quiet the pain in his back. He got out of bed and grabbed his guitar from the stand in the corner. He said it relaxed him to “noodle around.” She liked that expression; it made her think of the guitar strings as spaghetti strands. He played bits of things she thought she recognized but never did.

Lena stared at the faded picture on Stephen’s nightstand of a young blonde girl: Stephen’s daughter, Melanie. The girl’s face was rounder than Stephen’s but she had the same high forehead, the same held-back expression in her eyes as Stephen. Lena had asked about her but Stephen’s answers were always curt and close-ended. After he and Melanie’s mother divorced, he told her, she moved to New Mexico with their twelve-year-old daughter and discouraged him from making contact. “That’s what it was like back then,” Stephen had said. “Divorced fathers were discouraged from staying in their children’s lives. It’s not the same anymore, but that’s what it used to be like.”

“I’m sorry, Stephen,” Lena said, putting a tentative hand on his arm.

Stephen picked up his pipe, inhaled, blew out a practiced stream of smoke. “It’s okay,” he said, handing her the pipe. “If I were you, I wouldn’t want to have sex with me either.”

“Does this mean you’re going to send me back?”

“Do you want to go back?”

“No.”

“Then you won’t go back.”

He made it sound so simple.

. . .

A visa to America wasn’t the only reason Lena went to Stephen. She also felt she could help him, felt they could help each other, his of loneliness, hers of stagnation. The one person keeping her in Romania she couldn’t help anymore. Leopold, her Leopold who used to run a mile under five minutes, sing like Kurt Cobain, loved to go down on her, and was the only person on earth who had been able to explain how to divide fractions in a way she understood: that Leopold was gone.

First he was kicked out of his house, and then he came to where Lena had escaped. She’d convinced her family to let her live with a friend in the basement flat of a concrete block, an apartment so small, it was just one room with curtains for dividers. She let him steal the few pieces of jewelry she had, mourning only a turquoise ring from an aunt who had traveled through America’s Southwest. But when her roommate’s computer and emergency cash disappeared one night while she was sleeping, from under the bed where she’d hidden them, Lena knew she had to say goodbye to Leopold.

After three days, she heard him trying to pick the lock. It was close to dawn. When he couldn’t break in, he knocked lightly, calling out her name.

She threw on one of Leopold’s old sweaters, and shivering, she opened the door a crack.

“You can’t come in anymore, Leopold.”

“Lena, Lena,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“What else can I say? I’m a terrible human being. I steal from the people I love.”

“You need help, Leopold.”

“Yes, help me, Lena.”

“I can’t help you anymore, Leopold.”

“Let me in for just a minute. It’s freezing out here.”

“No, I can’t. Daniela won’t let me.”

“Fuck Daniela.”

“No, Leopold. Fuck you.”

She felt herself harden against him. Her Leopold was gone. This one smelled of sweat, fear, piss, something sweet and artificial like candy. This one lied easily. This one trembled like a skinny dog. This one needed a haircut badly, a good shave, nail clippers, clean well-fitting clothes, a sturdy pair of shoes, a filling meal, a good night’s rest, a reprieve from the clawing need for more drugs.

“I don’t know you anymore, Leopold.”

“Don’t say that,” Leopold begged. “Say anything but that. If you don’t know me, then I don’t know myself.”

“I don’t,” Lena said, her voice hard but her eyes wet. “I don’t know you. Goodbye.” She tried to close the door but Leopold had wedged in his foot. Unfortunately, all he had on his feet was a pair of sandals a friend had given him after he sold off his good shoes. The flimsy leather couldn’t hope to hold the door open against her willed resolution. He yelled in pain, banged on the door once with his fist, and then stood breathing heavily against it. Lena waited, leaning against the door, watching the tone of the light change in the room, not making a sound until he walked away.

Two weeks later, Leopold was found in the stairwell of an apartment building a block away, crumpled up like a sheet of paper, with a needle still sticking out between his toes. Lena wanted to tear out her hair when she heard, she wanted to run through the city naked, she wanted to climb the tallest tree she could find and jump. Instead, she went to bed with a fever and slept. For two days she didn’t eat or drink. After that she asked Stephen if he would like her to come to America.

. . .

About six months after Lena had moved in with Stephen, she returned from a walk to the store with the ingredients for beetroot soup. They had been talking about their favorite childhood foods the night before and Lena was excited about making the soup for him. But when she went to show the beets to Stephen, she did not find him in his study or the bedroom or the bathroom. She peeked out the window and saw that the Prius was still in the driveway. “Stephen?” she called out as she went through the small house again. “Hallo, Stephen? Are you here?”

A small voice called from the backyard, “Here.”

Stephen was sitting on the steps of the deck, his back held unnaturally straight.

“Stephen, are you all right?”

He nodded.

Lena wondered why he wouldn’t look at her. “Did something happen today?” she asked.

After what seemed a long time, he said, “My daughter died. Melanie died.”

Lena rushed to Stephen, put her arms around his stiff form. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Stephen. What happened?”

“She died,” he said. “Melanie. My daughter.”

“Oh my God, Stephen, oh my God.” Lena felt herself shrink. She knew this feeling, this moment that would cleave life into a before and after. She thought it should make her feel closer to Stephen, but suddenly she felt like being alone.

“It was a car accident. Her fault they think. I didn’t even know she did drugs. I didn’t know anything.”

Lena pulled herself together because Stephen needed her. “Did Melanie’s mother call and tell you?”

He nodded.

“Did anyone else get hurt?”

Stephen nodded. “A man. He was sitting next to her. He died, too.”

Lena turned away. “Why don’t you lay down? she said. “I’ll make you some tea.”

“Yes,” he said. He stood and walked stiffly, as if he was cold, toward the bedroom.

Lena brought him a tray with a cup of tea and a glass of Scotch. She didn’t know which he’d prefer. He was trembling very slightly, almost without noticing. He was sitting on his side of the bed looking at the floor.

He accepted the Scotch. Drank it all at once. “She had a son,” he said. “ A little boy who’s seven.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Lena said because she didn’t know what else to say.

“The funeral’s on Saturday.” He picked up his head to look at her. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course, Stephen, of course. Would you like me to arrange the travel?”

“No,” he said. “I did that already. I knew you would come with me. You’re a nice person, Lena.”

She walked over and took the empty glass and set it carefully on the nightstand. She stood in front of him until he put his head down again and leaned it gently against her stomach. She stroked the back of his neck. It felt good to be needed by him, and bad because she needed it.

Lena spent the afternoon making beetroot soup. She winced when she had to turn on the food processor and hoped it wasn’t disturbing Stephen. Earlier, she had heard strange sounds coming from the bedroom—huffing and groaning sounds as in a movie when a body transforms. She thought continually about Leopold all afternoon, the particular way he said her name, Lena! as though her name included an exclamation point.

At dinner, as they both stared at the blood red soup, Lena realized that it was all wrong. She swept the soup bowls into the sink and cut them big slices of rye bread that she slathered with butter. “Eat, Stephen,” she said. She also made him drink a glass of milk.

Later, she poured all of the beetroot soup into the sink, watching it slide thickly down the drain. She and her brother used to show their bloody smiles at each other while they were eating the soup. Now it made her want to throw up.

. . .

They flew into the Albuquerque airport, rented a car, and drove to their hotel in Santa Fe. Lena was charmed but didn’t say so. The light made everything glow. She opened the window and breathed in the wide open spaces, the warm color of the canyon walls, the flat land stretching for miles stubbled with tough spiky-looking bushes. She had no names for what she saw.

She remembered now what her aunt had said about her trip through the Southwest, the sense of space there, how vast and infinite it made the world seem. She said she had stood in the desert and felt like the only person on earth. And even been able to imagine that she could feel the world turning on its axis.

Her aunt was right. It was delicious how empty it all seemed. Empty, but not missing anything. In preparation for the trip, she had gone to the local library and asked the librarian to suggest some books for her. One of them was about the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. When Lena browsed through the book, she realized she had seen O’Keeffe’s paintings before, the huge flowers, the white skulls, the endless doors. She had thought them ugly until now.  

Their hotel was near the Santa Fe Plaza, and Lena felt a great longing as they drove by to walk among the tables and carts selling things, to talk to the people sitting with blankets of goods in front of them.

“Have you ever been here before, Stephen?” Lena asked.

He nodded. “A few times. I used to visit Melanie in the beginning.” He looked around. “It’s pretty much the same.”

“It’s wonderful,” Lena said.

Although it was hot outside, the inside of their hotel was cool. As soon as they got into their room, Lena kicked off her sneakers and felt the cold tile beneath her feet. She walked around admiring all the heavy wooden furniture, the colorful blankets, the corner fireplace that Stephen said was called a “kiva.”

Stephen was talking to Renee on the phone. “Can I see him tonight?” he asked. “I’ll drive over.” He turned to look at Lena. “She doesn’t have to,” he said. 

When he hung up, Lena said, “She doesn’t want me to come.” It was actually a relief but she did not want to show that to Stephen.

“No,” he sighed. He lay back on the bed. “She was always a difficult woman.”

“It’s her daughter,” Lena said. “She has a right.”

“She was my daughter, too.”

“Of course, Stephen.” She unlaced his sneakers and dropped them on the floor. “Would you like to take a nap? Eat something?”

“I didn’t even know her. My own daughter,” Stephen said, rolling over away from her.

“Why don’t you sleep? I’ll leave you alone.”

Lena slipped quietly into the bathroom and put on a light summer dress. When she looked over at the bed, she saw that Stephen hadn’t moved. She carried her sandals out of the room.

She stopped by the front desk to pick up a map and then walked out into the bright sun. She felt free and young. She felt badly for Stephen but his was a pain she couldn’t share. She thought of how she felt after Leopold died, how she wanted more than anything to jump out of her skin, to be anyone but who she was. Did Stephen feel that? Or was the loss of a child different?

Lena shook off her gloomy thoughts, telling herself she was in America now. What she had chiefly learned about Americans was that they did not like to face unpleasant things directly. Perhaps it was because most of the time they didn’t have to. They did not grow up like she did, in a place that favored the state over the individual, where you were forced to subsume your desires.

Where she grew up, life was a series of choices, none satisfying. Stand for hours in a line or forego your favorite kind of chocolate that appeared only a few times a year. It wasn’t always as grim as all that. Lena remembered meeting her friends in University’s Square after dark, smoking Carpațis, dancing to French rappers, watching break dancers, but it all felt in spite of, and not because.

Americans had a saying they liked to repeat often: move on. Move on. It was what had brought her to America; it was what she would keep doing.

She walked toward the O’Keeffe museum which the desk clerk had said would be open for another hour. She was surprised at how small it was. Perhaps because it was late in the day, it was mostly empty and she wandered through the big gallery rooms unimpeded. She felt loose and unmoored, far from where she began, far even from Berkeley.

She became slowly aware that a man was following her through the rooms, always a few pictures behind. She didn’t look at him to see if he was looking at her but she could feel it. She went into a darkened room where a short film about O’Keeffe’s life and work was playing on a loop, how sometimes she would paint the same picture of a door or window over and over again, at different times, in different lights. Lena wondered what O’Keeffe was looking for. If she was ever satisfied.

“That’s dedication, right?” the man said.

“Or obsession,” Lena said.

The man moved from the back of the room to sit on the bench near her. He put out his hand. “I’m Tom. I work here.”

“Lena.”

“What brings you to Santa Fe?”

“A funeral.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Someone you were close to?”

Lena shook her head. “I never met her. She was my boyfriend’s daughter.”

“That’s rough.”

The man was close to her age, and he had dark curly hair like Leopold. She closed her eyes and it was easy to imagine Leopold’s warm presence next to her. She felt an incredible wave of longing for him. It still happened to her. Would it always?

The man cleared his throat and said, “I have to close up soon.”

She opened her eyes. “Can I sit here until then?”

“Sure,” he said. “Take as long as you need. I’ve got some stuff to take care of but I’ll let you know when I need to lock up.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re kind.”

He seemed embarrassed by that, and waved it away. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Really. No big deal. Take your time,” he said again.

He left the darkened room and Lena watched the film another time, paying attention to O’Keeffe’s relationship with Steiglitz, how she left him to remain in New Mexico. Someone read part of O’Keeffe’s letter: “I chose coming away because here at least I feel good—and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside—and very still—Maybe you will not love me for it—but for me it seems to be the best thing I can do for you—I hope this letter carries no hurt to you—It is the last thing I want to do in the world.”

She felt the man sit down next to her again. “I should turn the film off now,” he said.

“No,” Lena said, moving toward him, her body one big heartbeat. She felt both embarrassed and euphoric. “Let it play.” She placed her hand on his, and broke through the membrane of their solitudes by kissing his nose. Leopold, too, had had a wonderful nose, not straight like this one but crooked and knobby from a fight with his brother. She brushed the memory aside and for once it slid away easily. She and this man whose name she wouldn’t remember made out like teenagers until Lena pushed him away and stumbled out of the museum, dazed with want and loss. She leaned against the building for a moment, letting the darkening desert air cool her down, return her to equilibrium.

. . .

The next day, Lena put on the plain black dress she’d found at a thrift store in Berkeley and helped Stephen with his tie. A consequence of his grief was that he had no energy; he would start to do things and then not notice he had given up on them.

The previous evening Lena had asked about Melanie’s son, Matthew. “He’s small for his age,” Stephen said. “Half something, Filipino or Vietnamese or something. The father’s never been in the picture.”

When Lena heard idioms, she saw them literally, so she imagined Melanie and Matthew alone in a family portrait, a shadow just at the edge where a man’s shape was disappearing.

“Will he live with Renee?” Lena asked.

“I suppose so. I didn’t ask.”

“What was he like? What kinds of things does he like?”

Stephen looked at her, surprised. “How am I supposed to know? I just met him.”

Lena went to her suitcase and took out a paper bag. She lay them on the bed: a toy car, superhero comic books, a small tube from which giant bubbles could be made.

Stephen sat down heavily on the bed. “I didn’t think to bring him anything.”

“I bought them yesterday,” Lena said. After leaving the museum, she had walked a block past a toy shop before doubling back. Her body had felt sore and fatigued, but alive. She teetered between feeling guilty and feeling triumphant.

“Thank you, Lena.”

“Thank you, Stephen.” As she said it, she felt like she was looking at him through a tunnel. She would leave Stephen, she knew that. But not yet. They still needed each other. She closed the gap between them, put her hands on his shoulders, and rested her head on his.

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