The telephone rings. I pick it up and a deep voice on the other end asks if this is Jacob Meyer. That’s my name, always has been ever since I was a baby, only child of Vincent and Nadine, but I’m working now, crucial I have my privacy, and everyone I know knows not to call when I’m working so I know it’s no one I know, a solicitor or else some kind of emergency, but no one to worry about with both parents dead and my wife sleeping downstairs which is why I picked up the phone in the first place so it wouldn’t wake her, and I say this, say, “We don’t accept solicitations over the phone,” and then the deep voice on the other end of the line tells me my wife doesn’t love me anymore.

I don’t ask what the hell are you talking about or who the fuck is this because I feel like deep down I know, have always known that I’d receive this call, that this call was a long time coming and if what the deep voice says is true then it’s true I’ve lost you, but then the deep voice says, “She’s with me now,” and I ask, “Do you mean literally or emotionally? Because she was sleeping downstairs just thirty minutes ago,” and he says, “Emotionally. Literally. What? Both. She’s got her arm around me, we’re on a ferry to Victoria and in the morning we drive to Saskatchewan where I’ll keep bees and she’ll bake bread with the honey.”