At the time, I thought about this a lot. I tried rearranging the variables, keeping the constant constant. I wondered what Patra was like at fifteen. I imagined her in high school: shorter than me, even skinnier, better liked. She’d be the kind of girl who had one close friend, someone who moved away when she was twelve and left her disconsolate at first, then sweetly, tragically distant. She’d have really excellent pens and extremely legible handwriting. I imagined myself at the husband’s age, thirty-seven (I’m thirty-seven now: I have a car payment, a PO box), and I made the husband into a
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