She'd been over since dinner. It was past eleven. I was already getting quiet in the way I get when she's about to leave, because I knew the house would be smaller when she was gone. She stood at the door working out the zipper on her coat, and the sight of her doing this ordinary thing in my hallway, under my hallway light, was the whole tender core of the evening right there. She said goodnight, said we should do this again soon. I said goodnight back and held the door and I loved her, in a slow plain way that wasn't about anything dramatic — just about this person, in this coat, leaving this house. I watched her to the gate. I closed the door and stood there for a second because the rooms behind me had just gotten quieter.
