It is still August, which means the days have a particular texture: sunblock, sea salt, a child nearby operating at a volume you’ve stopped registering as sound. Your husband is in the same state, you think. Possibly even the same Zip Code.
Somewhere beneath the haze, a small administrative part of your brain has started doing the math: family dinners, a lunch you agreed to months ago in a fit of optimism; a work thing that requires you to be, once again, a person in a room full of other adults. This is when the old faithful earns its name.
