Catherine wasn’t laughing anymore, but looked as if she might start again at any moment. “It’s funny,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “There are things you’re just positive will happen to you. Then there’s that second when you realize, Jesus Christ. Maybe they won’t.”

She was watching me closely. Her eyes, I noticed, were bloodshot. I shifted the ski pole under my leg.

“Have you ever had a feeling like that?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” I said, uneasy. “I guess I have most things I wanted.”

“You’re lucky.”

I felt her envy, sharp as the tang of her cigarette smoke on the cold air. We were far apart, I realized then, and this filled me with relief.

Catherine flicked her half-smoked cigarette into a snowbank. “Of course,” she said, “getting what you want is only the beginning. The hard part is holding on to it.”

I was annoyed. “How do you know?”

Catherine took a while to answer. She seemed deep in thought. “I just know,” she finally said.

We hang up, and I go back to my closet to do another hour’s work. I’m looking forward to tonight—I always liked Bud Templeton, though I’ve hardly seen him in years. I still think of him as the tall, wry neurologist I loved to chat with over plastic cups of wine at school plays. We would congratulate each other on our daughters’ performances as orphans or lost boys, one eyebrow raised to show that, unlike some parents, we had this all in perspective. But perspective was what I lacked, it turns out, for my life had felt as permanent as childhood. I’ve even outgrown the clothes I wore as a young wife: summer suits, skirts below the knee, tall black boots—none of it fits; I’ve become a smaller version of myself, distilled from an earlier abundance I was not even aware of. I take unexpected pleasure now in packing these outfits away and stepping into a sleek, narrow dress I bought last week. I carry my wine to the window and wait, my face near the glass. The sky is clear and dark, the lights of the city trembling beneath it. As I watch them, I’m overwhelmed by a feeling I haven’t had in years: a sweet, giddy sense that anything might happen to me.