Cora was willing to show up and do her best. She was willing to participate, fill out the annual self-evaluations. In general, she complied. But it was too much to ask her to be passionate. No one was passionate about content management. Passion was what went on in the other world. It was between two people with unwholesome fixations on each other,

do. You had friends and saw them for dinner. One party hosted and the other brought wine. You discussed current events while the kids watched a movie in a distant room. At the end of the night, you lay in bed talking about the other couple.

said. Cora remembered. Their pleasing heft. The soft cubes of their feet. The way they fell asleep on your shoulder with their mouths smushed to one side. Their unguarded love. The way they held out their arms to indicate they wanted to be picked up. The shared project of them. How they bound you together by making you suffer acutely. You suffered

Every year felt like youth’s end, until the next came along and showed you just how young you’d been. She threw a thirty-seventh birthday party for Eliot. She threw a thirty-eighth birthday party for Eliot. They were all down with norovirus on Eliot’s thirty-ninth. She and Jules teamed up to throw a joint fortieth for Eliot and Sam.