Free Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien

coming back to her. Bits and pieces she thought were long forgotten. Before that moment, she was too
     young to fully understand that death could happen. But then the young man on the television, the one with the curly hair and
     the grimace, he died and it broke her heart.
    Your husband has the body and soul of a long-distance runner. He is a long-haul kind of man. Even asleep, he has that tenacity.
     At a moment’s notice, he’ll be up again, stretched and ready. Unlike you. When you lie down, you doubt your ability to up
     yourself again. You are the Sloppy Joe of women. You watch TV lying on the couch, you read in bed, curled up on one side.
     Sometimes, when the lights are out, you drag your computer into bed with you. While your husband snores, you write about the
     woman who owned four thousand glass floats. An arsonist torched the building she lived in. The apartment collapsed but,miraculously, no one was killed. The morning after, passers-by came and picked the surviving balls from the rubble — black
     and ashy and melted down.
    At night, in the glow of the screen, you type to the up, down of your husband’s breathing. It’s difficult to look at him in
     these moments. His face is so open, so slack-jawed, vulnerable and alone. Both of you have always been solitary people. Like
     big cedars, your husband says, bulky and thick, growing wider year by year. You are charmed by your husband’s metaphors, the
     quiet simplicity of them.
    Your husband has never been unfaithful to you. But only a few months ago, you found the letter he had written to Charlotte.
     They had grown up together and, in the letter, he confessed that he loved her. Your husband left the letter, and her reply,
     face up on the kitchen table. You imagine the instant he realized, standing on the warehouse floor, broom in one hand. He
     tried to call you, but you just stood there, letting the telephone ring and ring. When you read his confession on that piece
     of looseleaf, your husband’s perfect script stunned you. You thought of his face, his brown eyes and the receding slope of
     his hairline, the way he sat at the kitchen table reading the paper, frowning, his lips moving silently to read the words.
    The woman, Charlotte, had written back. She had told him to pull himself together. She’d returned his letter, telling him
     that their friendship would neverrecover. And then he left both letters on the kitchen table. Not maliciously. You refuse to believe he did it maliciously.
     Your husband is not that kind of man. He is the kind of person who honors privacy, who can carry a secret until the end. Shell-shocked
     and hurt, he must have forgotten everything.
    You’ve imagined it perfectly. Before he left for work, he took both letters and laid them on the kitchen table. He read them
     over and over. He’d offered to leave his marriage for her, but she had turned him down flat.
Pull yourself together.
He made a pot of coffee and poured himself a cup. He put on his shoes, then his jacket. The envelope was on the counter.
     He folded it up and tucked it in his pocket. Hours later, while his mind wandered back and forth, he pulled it out, only to
     discover the envelope was empty. The letters were still face up on the kitchen table, where his wife, sleep-creased and hungry,
     had found them. He called, but the phone just rang and rang.
    That night, you went out and didn’t come home. You climbed on a bus and crossed the city, crying intermittently into the sleeve
     of your coat. At a twenty-four-hour diner, you ordered a hamburger and fries and sat there until dawn, when the early risers
     started showing up for breakfast. You read the paper from the night before, and then the paper from that day, cover to cover,
     and then you walked home, through the tree-lined streets and the slow muscle of trafficheading downtown. At home, your husband was already gone. You turned on the TV, then you lay down in bed and slept for hours.
    You’ve pictured