She was lodged so completely in me that I couldn’t order lunch without one of her mannerisms falling out of my mouth. I spoke in a rhythm that was distinctly hers as I told the server at the airport hotel, on the morning I flew back to Toronto, that I would like a muffin along with my corn flakes. I wondered how durable that state of affairs would be, wondering whether I would be tortured by my speech apparatus indefinitely. Turns out it took a month or so for that part of the pain to work itself out. The idiosyncrasies of the relationship seem like your deepest fluency while you’re in it, but they evaporate rapidly, like any other unspoken language.