“Neither do I! I can’t make babies either, you fucking idiot!” James yelled. Ana went for the door, opening it. Again, James slammed it shut, blocking it with his body.

“Don’t go—I’m sorry—don’t go—”

“Let me go.”

“Don’t go—” Ana opened the door, and James slammed it again, louder. Ana breathed heavily.

“Ana, look at me.” She wouldn’t, her eyes fixed on floating space. “Don’t leave. You’re always leaving—”

The sound of fist on wood was a dull whack that left no mark, but James pulled his hand away and swore. Shreds of skin flapped from his knuckles, tiny white sheets. Blood seeped onto his wrist. They both looked down at the useless hand.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Tears were streaming down Ana’s face. “I can’t help you.”

She opened the door at last, and he followed her, the blood from his hand seeping down his arm now. “Ana!”

The taxi idled outside.

Ana managed to carry the suitcase, and the driver met her halfway up the walk, grabbing one of them, glancing at James with suspicion.

At the same time, Ana and James heard it: Finn crying, distantly, through the open door.

“Ana—” said James, straightening, clutching his ragged fist.

“Go get him,” she said, and she meant it.

But James stood on the walk as the driver loaded her bags, and Ana climbed in. He stayed there as she shut her door, and the car pulled away. Only when he couldn’t see it anymore did he turn and stagger back to the house and the boy waiting for him.

December

ANA HADN’T HAD much to unpack. The movers had brought a few more suitcases and boxes. She had taken a junior suite, not because it was cheaper, but because she imagined something sparser and more monastic than the Grand Suite option. Instead, rooms were opulent in ambition, but cheap in materials, with yellow throw cushions in the tones of a fast-food restaurant occupying all the extra space on the couch and the wing chair. A miniature Christmas tree sat in a bucket next to the kitchen table.

On a Saturday afternoon a month after her arrival, Ana sat on the edge of the couch, looking at the tree, decorated in gold balls. She felt tired and light, but not sad.

She had done it in such a way as to never have to see them. She had left the car. Everything else could be dealt with later, in six months, when she would decide whether or not to return. She didn’t miss any of her things. She felt that she was readying for something and wondered if this was how James had felt all those years, waiting for their baby—the great, exhilarated anticipation.

She put on her scarf and jacket, took her bag. The door was hollow and caught on the rug behind her.

“Good night, madame,” said the doorman as she passed through the lobby.

“Bonne soirée,” she replied.

Ana went to the gym and ran farther than usual on the treadmill. Her body was getting stronger. She had put on a little weight, and with it came a sensation of being rooted, heavier in her feet. She liked the new curve of her hips.

After her workout, Ana sat in the steam room, something she had only started to do in Montreal. There was one woman in the room with her, concealed by puffs of steam. At one point, she shifted to reveal a long, vertical scar along her chest plate, and then vanished in the heat again.

After showering, Ana applied her makeup carefully. Half the guests would be francophone, and though her French was rusty, it was passable, and she had found herself enjoying speaking it, even when she struggled for the right word. She felt as though she were leaving everything, even her tongue.

The party turned out to be dull. By dessert, Ana had stopped listening to the conversations around her, gazing instead out the large paned windows at the frosted streetlamps, wondering why there was no music playing.

A man in an elegant suit switched seats with a colleague in order to sit next to her. He spoke English and asked her the same questions she was always asked: What did she think of the city? Was she cold? Was she following the government corruption scandal? His name was Richard, and he had a practiced intensity, locking her gaze. As he filled her glass, Ana assessed the gray hair, the weathered but moisturized face and tidy nails. He was a type. At the end of the evening, she gave him her number when he asked for it.

The first date, Richard picked her up in his car. He took her to dinner at a restaurant in Outremont, ordering in his perfect French, complimenting Ana on her own efforts. Afterward, she went back to his apartment in Old Montreal, a prewar loft now walled with glass, with views out to the skyline.

The sex was another foreign experience. She hadn’t slept with that many people, really. She was suddenly acutely aware of how her body had changed; only James knew what she really looked like, who she had been when she had been her physical best. As Richard pulled down her tights, Ana imagined the pale blue veins in her legs. He kissed her neck and shoulders, and she saw the skin on her elbows thinning, puckered. But Richard murmured worship about her body: “You’re gorgeous,” he said, gripping and smoothing, and she let herself fall into him. He was forceful, too, and the staged roughness turned her on. She came with stuttered breath, but then he glanced at her with a triumphant gaze that made her look away.

Ana went through the courtship with the fascination of an archaeologist at a dig. This was here, all this time, and I didn’t know! She thought of him as her first adult boyfriend.

Richard sent flowers and took her to the opera, where the heels pinching her feet didn’t stop her from luxuriating in the music. He would vanish for days into his work, and that was fine. She could do the same, and he said nothing. Once, he went away to Florida for a weekend of golf with old friends. There was no talk of fidelity or future. A fifty-three-year-old man without any children spoke to long-ago decisions, not to be reopened. He never asked her why she had no children, and at first, this silence was emancipating.

And there was much silence between them, which Ana had thought she needed.

One night, Richard cooked her dinner, and they had sex, furiously, on his bed. It was only ten o’clock, but Richard lay sleeping, shirtless with a chest of gray hair, arms like a starfish. He slept in this odd way, totally untroubled. She felt a pull of longing for James, an urge to share her strange new reality with him. She knew James would find Richard outrageous; corporate and trivial. This comforted Ana somehow, for part of her agreed.

She had awoken that morning feeling that she had left a piece of herself somewhere, the way she imagined a heroin addict might feel joining the sober and straight life. This, she realized now, was how it felt to be bound to James. Their past, known only to them, could rear itself anywhere, even here, in the bedroom of another man.

Ana pulled on her underpants and went to the window. Below, on the cobblestone streets, snow lay shining, inviting in the streetlamps. She put on her skirt and her boots, washed her face in the bathroom. In a week, she would see her mother for Christmas. She had booked a hotel. She wouldn’t call James, not yet.

She left Richard sleeping.

The cold was still shocking to her. It had begun to snow, large, fat flakes that melted on Ana’s face.

She walked quickly, crunching in her boots past Christmas lights in trees. Illuminated wreaths hung from the streetlamps on Sherbrooke.

She heard the choir before she reached the church, which was modest, its stained glass clouded with dirt. They were having a rehearsal, starting and stopping, with laughter in between. Ana stood and listened until the singers fell into one another and the music rose, draping her body.