I came home to six of his relatives waiting for dinner—so i walked to the bedroom and ended the “good wife” routine.

I looked. I smiled. The smile was automatic—the one that costs nothing. Galina rose to kiss my cheek, and I let her. Lena waved from the couch and said something about being in the neighborhood. The children did not look up from the television, and Pota lifted his beer in a kind of greeting from the kitchen doorway.

The kitchen, I noticed, had the beginning smell of something being cooked: onions, something heavy, something that was going to take at least an hour.

“I’m just going to change,” I said pleasantly.

I walked to the bedroom. I closed the door. I sat on the edge of the bed in the half-dark and took off my shoes and held them in my lap for a moment. The television was audible through the wall. The smell of onions was stronger than I would have liked. I had eaten. I was tired. I had spent the last three hours managing other people’s pain and distress professionally and competently. And I had nothing left—absolutely nothing—for the performance required of the woman who has just come home to find six uninvited relatives installed in her living room and is expected to be delighted about it.

I put my shoes neatly by the wardrobe. I changed into comfortable clothes. I opened my nightstand drawer and took out the novel I was in the middle of. I got into bed, propped the pillow against the headboard, and began to read.

Marcus came in fourteen minutes later. I know because I had been watching the clock with a specific, detached interest in my own patience.

“Hey,” he said. He’d closed the door behind him. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I said. I turned a page.

“Are you coming out?”

I looked up from the book. “No,” I said. “Marcus.” I set the book down, keeping my thumb in the page. “When did you know they were coming?”

A pause. “This afternoon.”

“This afternoon,” I said. “So you had several hours during which you could have called me.”

“I know. I should have.”

“And instead, you let me come home to find six people in our living room at 6:30 in the evening after a ten-hour shift.” I picked the book back up. “I’ve eaten. I’m going to read. You’re welcome to join me.”

“There are guests.”

“There are your guests,” I said. “I didn’t invite them.”

He stood in the doorway for a moment. I could feel him there, hovering in that particular way of a man who wants to argue but can’t find the argument. And then he went back out and closed the door. I listened to the muffled sounds of the living room settle back into themselves. And I read my book.