PAOLO

The traffic light ahead turned red.

I stopped the car and sat with my hands on the wheel and stared at nothing. The engine idled. The city moved around me the way it always did, indifferent, continuous, unbothered by the fact that I was coming apart inside a stationary vehicle on an ordinary street.

I should have been home an hour ago.

I couldn't make myself drive there.

My fingers tightened on the wheel and I felt it coming the way I always felt it coming — not gradually, not gently, but all at once, like a door being kicked open from the inside. I tried to breathe through...