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In this way Mark Wilken was effectively forced to retire. One bright spot was that he’d won his full pension for twenty-two years of labor, but with that he was barred from working at a for-profit company. It was as though the company was saying, We will give you this bit to survive, but you must s…

[...] Why am I living this life? What’s the point of lying down in that bed every night? And I said if it gets to three months, I’m leaving.

And then it was three months, and Lina became—not overnight, because it had been coming for years, but overnight it rose from under her flesh up to the sur…

The best part of her whole life happens next. He slows to a stop on a quiet street, parks his wife’s car at the curb of a house with no lights on, and just looks at her. He does it for ten seconds, maybe less. In those seconds, every bad thing she has ever thought about herself is erased, and she…

In the car he’s cockier than usual. As a teacher, she decides, he’s far nicer. He’s never entirely tender—even at his warmest, he exudes the pale sweetness of a cashew—but now he is armed and cool. Getting into the car has triggered an acute shift; she goes from feeling half woman and half child to…

In the car he’s cockier than usual. As a teacher, she decides, he’s far nicer. He’s never entirely tender—even at his warmest, he exudes the pale sweetness of a cashew—but now he is armed and cool. Getting into the car has triggered an acute shift; she goes from feeling half woman and half child to…