If we’ve been waiting for an end to her unhappiness, here it is. Relief has arrived in the form of a memory. She recalls who she once was. She is who she once was.

It’s quite beautiful. The story has increased its meaning into its very last line, and even into the white space afterward. As we’ve said good endings do, this one creates an entire future world of different, plausible possibilities.

After a minute she gives up. Sits there for a little while, then tries again. She knows by now there will be no response, but she’s after something else. She hears the tinny beep against her ear and it almost physically conjures for her the empty rooms and passages down which it carries. That corner. That ornament. That sill. She closes her eyes, listening. A commotion of longing and revulsion inside. How did it become so complicated? Home used to mean only one Thing, not a blizzard of things at war.

How ordinary and how strange human life is. And how delicately poised. Your own end might lie just in front of you, under your feet. This plane breaking up into a million flaming pieces, one moment from now.

She emerges from the confessional in a state of unease, far worse than when she went in. No penance to ease the burden! She knows she must end the affair but doesn’t think she can, a common human dilemma, not only related to romance. Shouldn’t have gone to the priest, not before she was ready. Who knows what she wanted when she went in there, but certainly not this outcome. Now she’s having a crisis.