My husband asked me to let my sister be his “wife” for one night. He said it like he was asking me to pass the salt.

Chicago in late October had a way of making every window look lonely. The towers downtown glowed through mist, traffic hissed on Lake Shore Drive, and people who had spent the day pretending to be important were peeling themselves out of office clothes and trying to remember who they were at home. Carissa parked in the narrow driveway behind the brick two-story she had bought three years earlier in Lincoln Park, sat with both hands still resting on the steering wheel, and let her eyes close for exactly six seconds.

Six seconds was all she gave herself.

Then she went inside.

She had argued three motions in Cook County that day, fielded two panicked calls from junior associates who billed like they were allergic to clarity, and signed a stack of documents thick enough to refinance a stranger’s life. The kind of day that would have crushed some people had simply been Tuesday for her. She kicked off her heels in the mudroom, carried her laptop bag into the kitchen, and started water boiling for pasta because cooking, unlike people, still responded to effort.

Damen Cross was already home.

He had been home for hours.

He was stretched across the couch in gray joggers and a faded Northwestern sweatshirt he had not earned, one ankle over the other, remote in hand, sports highlights flashing across the television. An empty energy drink can sat on the coffee table beside a plate he had somehow managed to leave there instead of walking it the additional twelve feet to the sink.

When she walked in, he turned his head just enough to register her shape.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “Smells good.”

He said it the way some men said grace—out of habit, without reverence.

Carissa didn’t answer right away. She set the pot, salted the water, opened the refrigerator, and started moving with the precision of a woman who knew that if she stopped even for a moment, fatigue would crawl up her spine and pin her to the kitchen floor.

Damen wandered in only after the pasta was plated.

He leaned against the counter while she set two bowls down at the table, and there was something too casual in his face, a looseness around his mouth she recognized from depositions and bad clients. It was the expression people wore when they had already decided what was fair and were simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.