I turned to my husband slowly, the way you turn to someone when you already suspect the answer will rearrange everything you thought you knew.
“How long, Greg?”
“I’ve never actually brought any home before tonight,” he said, which was, I would learn, both true and not remotely the point. “The other nights — I was taking the late feeding shift at the rescue. I slept down here afterward so I wouldn’t wake you coming in.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
He looked at the floor the way Michael used to when he was eight and caught in something. “I’ve been volunteering there. About six months now. The overnight shifts only started three weeks ago.”
Six months. The number landed in my chest like a stone dropped into still water, the ripples spreading out into every ordinary evening I thought I’d understood.
“Doing what, exactly?”
