The things that made her happy over the years were often because of him. She knew this.

For instance: Mark suggested she go on the trip she always talked about but never went on. For an early birthday gift and a Christmas gift also, he would pay for some of it. The offer surprised her, since he often behaved as if he were still a graduate student, rather than a tenure-track professor, so completely frugal, she thought. The trip was expensive. She was not surprised at all, however, that Mark had already looked up the trip details and found the perfect dates. He knew her schedule well, better than she did sometimes. A living calendar. He suggested a particular week in June. It had a lower rate, he said, and fit between two of her work events.

She had always wanted to ride horses and camp in the mountains, ever since she was a child. Back then, she rode every day, but never in the mountains, never camping. She had certainly never driven wild horses through Idaho mountains and plains.

It worried her—the idea of going at all and the idea of going on her own. She hadn’t ridden in ages and worried she would be the worst person in the world. She worried that she would not make any friends, and also that she might be forced to eat mayonnaise. But she had always wanted to go and he had given her a present. So she decided to go anyway.

She purchased airfare and then became increasingly anxious and debated whether or not going on the trip was truly the right thing to do. It was a rolling internal debate that she knew was pointless since the tickets were bought, so as she debated, she also prepared. She interviewed former trip takers. She exercised. She read books and watched videos. She bought appropriate equipment: boots and gloves and breeches and biodegradable soap.

Since it had been years since she had any practice, she took riding lessons at Prospect Park with a grouchy trainer who was not at all skillful at communicating with people, only with horses.

She should have quit her lessons the very first day when the grouchy trainer yelled across the arena: No! That’s not how you do it! while providing no explanation of how she was supposed to do it. But the trip was for “Advanced Riders Only” and she worried very much that she was no longer anything near advanced, if she ever would have called herself that to begin with. So she kept paying the grouchy trainer with poor communication skills. The trainer who loved horses so much, she thought, because they were nonverbal.

She worried the whole way to Idaho that no one would be there to pick her up, but of course they were. When she arrived, a Mormon cowboy and two young girls from France waved at her from a mud-splattered SUV. They drove to the ranch to join the others.

Each day while she was there, she worried until she forgot to worry. The mornings were always somewhat uncomfortable and the evenings were somewhat calmer; each day it got a little easier. She rode over mountains and through meadows and forests and rivers. She washed her hair in ice-cold creeks, watched her breath in the morning, and at night saw stars like she’d never seen. She was warmed by campfires and s’mores and people who sang country songs she knew from when she was very young. And although she was with two Englishmen who called her Brooklyn, an Englishwoman who snored loudly, three hot French youth and five devout Mormons, all people whom she had just met, she very much felt at ease there. It was the first time in a long while.

It turned out she was not the worst person in the world. In fact no one really was. She made friends who laughed and made her laugh. She realized at some point that she hadn’t laughed so hard in some time and also that she could be quite funny herself, sometimes. It surprised her that she had forgotten.

Even though the cook tried to make her eat mayonnaise, spreading it on both sides of lunchtime sandwiches, she paced back and forth outside the cook’s tent all morning until she garnered enough courage to ask the cook to stop. And the cook did, making her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from then on.

Things that made her happy often happened because of him.

She wondered if these things would have happened without him. Perhaps she would not have learned that she was not the worst person in the world, that no one was really, or that she could gather enough courage to avoid mayonnaise and to speak every now and again. She would not have made such interesting new friends or learned such interesting things. She would not have forgotten to worry each day for a little while or been momentarily content without purpose. She would not have laughed so much, or seen those stars. She would not have felt at peace, content for a moment.

Did the things that made him happy have something—anything—to do with her? she wondered.