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[...] And so begins what I see as his slow fade from me. We talk less and less, and since we both grew up in houses schooled to letting people vaporize into their own internal deserts with alacrity, we each let the other get smaller.

Frogs were keeping time in air drenched with honeysuckle.

I thought you wanted that party we're having, he says, with your sister coming for a week.

This party--our first--was long negotiated. He's noting the traffic to and from the airport, the hours of writing he'll lose. Should I offer to cancel the party in order to be picked up? When he hangs up, …

Yet for every conceivable holiday--from Easter lamb to Christmas ham--our tin-car car crunches up the drive to the Whitbread estate, which lures me in some ways and yet always saps me dry. This isn't meant to sound peevish, for the Whitbreads are never not nice. But from the second I haul my bag up…

[...] As he's locking up, he says--color blazing high on his flared cheekbones--And you quit your job. With your school loans and your father sick. Are you crazy?