It began at two in the morning.
Not dramatically. Not with the sudden and cinematic urgency that narratives tend to assign to moments of this kind, as though the body were required to announce itself with appropriate theatrics to confirm the significance of what was beginning. It started quietly, the way things that genuinely matter tend to start, with a stillness that was different from the surrounding stillness of the night and a certainty that arrived in my body before any specific physical evidence had fully presented itself to confirm it. I lay in the dark for twenty minutes, breathing carefully, taking stock of what I knew and what I was certain of, and then I reached across to Charles's side of the bed.
