Years later they find themselves talking about chances, moments when their lives might have swerved off for the smallest reason. What if I hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning? What if you’d been out, as you were when I tried three times the night before? Then she tells him a secret. She’d been there all evening, and she knew he was the one calling, which was why she hadn’t answered. Because she felt— because she was certain—her life would change if she picked up the phone, said hello, said, I was just thinking of you. I was afraid, she tells him. And in the morning I also knew it was you, but I just answered the phone the way anyone answers a phone when it starts to ring, not thinking you have a choice.