My name is Judith Santana. I am thirty-two years old, and I work as a billing coordinator for a chain of veterinary clinics in Covington, Kentucky, which means I spend my days ensuring that dog owners pay for their golden retrievers’ dental cleanings, a procedure that costs, on average, forty dollars more than my own last dental visit. This is its own category of depressing, but it is not the depressing I want to talk about today.
Let me back up about six hours.
It was a Saturday in June, Leo’s birthday, and Freya had converted our modest three-bedroom ranch on Dorsy Avenue into something that could only be described as a Pinterest board for a man who once told me his ideal birthday consisted of a good steak and nobody talking to him. There were streamers. There was a banner. There was a cake shaped like a football, which made no sense because Leo’s sport was bowling, but Freya had a vision, and questioning Freya’s vision was something you simply did not do if you wanted the rest of your afternoon to pass in any version of peace.
