The second week she stopped noticing him.

That was what she told herself. That she had adjusted, that the specific awareness of him in the room had become background noise the way the courtyard sounds had become background noise and the creak of the third floorboard from the door had become background noise.

This was not entirely true.

What was true was that she had gotten better at pretending she wasn't noticing him which was a different thing but served the same purpose.

Tuesday she came back from her seminar to find he had left the window open and the room smelled like outside — cut grass and something else,...