Gemma doesn’t note the wariness in his voice, because her own words are repeating in her head: “since we moved” as opposed to “moved back.” Which would have made it sound like she and Des had been an item in Ireland originally. But they hadn’t been. They don’t actually know how to be in their country of origin together. They stand around their breakfast bar, swirling espressi. They squirm palely, unsexily on their oversoft mattress, both appalled by Ireland’s lack of bidets. They wear waterproofs in the rain, or carry umbrellas, which once prompted a passing car to roll down the window and shout: “Gay!” In an effort to retrieve a social life, they’ve been leaving jaunty voice memos for school-era friends, inviting them to hang out—friends whose weddings they missed and whose children and health conditions they don’t know the names of. In the messages, Gemma hears her own accent separate out from her, like she’s been dubbed.

On Friday, they’d gone to the best restaurant in the county (something they’d planned for as soon as Gemma was able to belly laugh without wincing), but Desmond had shaken the bread basket on their table and commented: “These weren’t cut from the same baguette. This is the ends of other people’s breads.” The dismay in his voice stopped Gemma from finding it funny.

In the rearview mirror, Gemma sees her husband’s face hued gray by his phone. He’s checking where sempre dritto leads on Google Maps, scanning the next few minutes of their lives for junctions. That wanting to know had often inspired and even aroused her. But his wanting to know had lately tipped over into needing, his curiosity oxidizing into something altogether less shiny.

Oh, Desmond Desmond Desmond. What does he need her to do? Tell him it wasn’t his fault? But the police report said as much, in plain English. He’d been driving like a grown man recently struck by his father. That morning, his father had sprung at him but had been too out of sync with himself to land the punch. “It happens,” the nurse said mildly, as if referring to matters of the toilet. It happens? Desmond repeated to Gemma in the corridor. That someone who’s always loved you, pretty well without pause, suddenly and certainly ends their subscription?

It does happen. You look at a person you’ve known and who has known you—a person with whom you’ve shared an understanding beyond language, a person whose smell comes out of your own pores—and you want to protect your memories with them. Which is to say, you have no mind to add new ones.