I watched them make a home and only sometimes thought of a fight between my husband and me that had seemed inconsequential in the moment and now, in comparison, changed. I would walk back to my own apartment, holding my gloved hands over my ears against the January wind, feeling the blood close to freezing under that thin skin. When I got there I looked around as I thought my husband might have on his way out: the piles of books and the low, long couch my only concession to interior design. I remembered the way he had said, in between other, more serious injuries, We never even decorated.

I wanted to fight him at the time. He was implying that I had never decorated, I thought, that I had left multiple boxes unpacked, full of things I must not have needed or at least didn’t miss. I wanted to remind him that all the apartments we’d lived in had been similarly plain, that my style could most generously be described as sparse. I didn’t. I felt what he meant. I had not made an attempt to make a home for us. I had hoped that just getting married would mean a home would follow. I held on to that fight, not because the absence of decor didn’t matter, but because if I could answer now I would say the truth: I thought I had more time.