She had told him: don't come. The drive was three hours. The room was small and smelled of the humidifier they ran at night and she had not wanted him to see the tubes. He had said: all right. She had heard in the way he said it that he would come.
Her own exception was in the drawer of the nightstand. She had nearly not renewed it the second time. That was four years ago. She had been sitting at her kitchen table with the form and a pen, and she had understood, in the way you understand things you have known for a long time without naming them, that renewing the form was a way of choosing to be held. She had renewed it.
She thought about calling him back. She had thought about it for most of the first day and had not called. The second day she had decided that if he came she would be angry, and she had spent some time considering what exactly she would be angry about. She could not locate it precisely. She had let the question go.
Three days. She had counted the hours by the light through the window. He would leave in the morning, she had thought, because he was the kind of person who would need a night to decide and would then leave in the morning.
She heard a car. She knew the sound of it, not because she knew his car specifically but because she knew the sound of that particular distance, the way it changed as it turned into the drive.
She listened to the sound of his car in the drive, and then not.
The door opened. She held out her hand.