It was nearly 25 years ago he first asked me, over a burger and fries in a local tavern on my lunch break, whether I had ever thought about having a thing with him. Caught off-guard, I reply too honestly, “Yeah but the Valley is way too small,” and I change the topic. As if the question was never on the table. I look away, but the thought registers. I think about my husband.

Josh has a really cool poster taped on his ceiling above his bed. It’s an interpretation of what Aristotle looked like with lots of bright colors. Underneath the picture it says, “It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.” He has a lot of posters, but this one is the biggest and my favorite. I really get it. And it sums up everything Josh stands for.

He called The Courier the day after they buried Priscilla. As town librarian for decades, she’d been the one who read it, occasionally calling his attention to local news. His only consistent use of the paper was to clip the crossword they did in bed together each night before turning out the light. He tried a puzzle the night after the funeral, but didn’t complete it.

Julie and I are standing at the bar. We’re taking small sips of our bottles of Smirnoff and Julie shouts in my ear, “I want to join a student organization. But I don’t know which one. There are so many.”

“Hard,” I shout back.

The bridesmaid’s dress from your best friend Nina’s wedding, three months before your own, baby’s breath blue, strapless, tea length; it swirled when you danced with your him. Nina had pre-wedding jitters. You had none. You thought you’d found the perfect man. So thoughtful. So kind. So attentive. He said you were the love of his life, his jewel. He bought you flowers for no reason at all.

As a human being, living in the world, I know it’s all a game. But what if I don’t know the rules?

This is the question I am asking myself as someone flashes their high beams in my rear-view mirror. The lights are so bright and close I tense for the impact.

We were having a heat wave, the kind that grabbed you in its jaws and shook you like I saw the neighbor’s dog do once with a rabbit. He’d snuffed it out, poor bunny. Even the clothes on the line seemed limp and perpetually damp. Six o’clock and neither of us felt like firing up the grill. I could barely muster the energy to throw together a salad, open a tin of tuna.

Ever since my father died, ever since I pulled the plug and killed him, Monday night had been therapy. My therapists say I have a tendency to denial. Tuesday was movement therapy. Thursday was my Fatherless Daughters’ Support Group. Those nights used to be dance nights. But Monday for the last year and half, I had therapy from 8:00 to 8:45, and then wrote in my journal at Café Caffeine

As she did every morning, Beatrice Steingut stood facing her bathroom mirror, examining the tapestry of creases that criss-crossed virtually every inch of her face. She smiled broadly in a vain effort to stretch away age. The crevices weren’t always there, she knew, but when did they start?