He was attentive without crowding me and generous without performing it, and he remembered everything I told him, down to the name of a teacher I had mentioned once. The only strange thing was the black compression sleeve on his right forearm. A motorcycle accident, he said, a scar he was ashamed of. He wore it to restaurants, around the house, to bed. The one time I asked to see it his whole face changed and he asked me not to, and I never asked again.

He proposed at five months. Two weeks later we were at his parents’ house for Sunday dinner, and he took me up to his childhood bedroom before his mother called him down to shift a cabinet. I was twisting the ring on my finger when it slipped into the gap beside the armrest, and when I pushed my hand down after it I found a metal box in a grocery bag instead.