“I never misrepresented myself,” he’d say.

That was a favorite, as if people weren’t supposed to evolve and change and make requests of each other to bend and grow and expand.

At some point, she accepted it. It was up to her to make the kind of living that would allow them to participate in the life they’d signed up for. He accepted it, too. He pretended to be apathetic to the money, but you should have seen how he liked the car. You should have seen how he liked the club—the pool on the rooftop, way above the city, both metaphorically and actually. So Toby adjusted his schedule to be home a little early to relieve Mona, the babysitter. He stood back and allowed her to try for this big thing she wanted to do. She did it, not out of bravery, but out of two parts no choice and three parts because to see Matt Klein again would have been to commit a failure she couldn’t have come back from.

So she did her work and Toby made the noises of someone who was stepping back, but he didn’t really do it. He came home on time, sure. He made dinner when Mona didn’t. But he didn’t adjust his expectations of her, or leave room for how tired she could get or how harried or busy. He loved taking those long walks. No matter how late they were, he wanted to walk. Across the park, across the city. She kept trying to explain to him that time functioned in units. For all his love of physics, he never quite grasped that one: If you use this time to walk to dinner that is thirty-five blocks away instead of letting me finish this email in a cab on the way there, I will be finishing the email at the table. The email isn’t optional. The email is the entire thing.