She was forty-five and did discharge planning at a hospital in Toledo, which mostly meant telling families what the insurance would not cover. She got home at 7:40. She made a real dinner and ate it at the table with a vegetable on the plate. At 10:15 she opened the freezer for the first time and stood there with the door open, deciding.

She ate the pint standing up, because sitting down would have made it a meal, and a meal is something you have to think about having had. The empty container went to the bottom of the trash, under the mail. She was not sad, exactly. She had spent nine hours being calm at people, and the ice cream did not require her to be calm at it.