Dept. of Speculation

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, death by suicide, suicidal ideation, and mental illness.

The narrative shifts into the third-person point of view; the third-person narrator refers to the protagonist as “the wife.”

The wife feels afraid when she notices changes in her marriage. One day, she and her husband go to a café. Over coffee, he asks her about when she was happiest. She realizes that when people ask this question, they want you to share a memory that includes them. She instantly feels something shift between them, but only asks him if he’s having an affair a month later. Around this time, he starts staying later at work and “misses putting their daughter to bed” (96). When she finally asks him, the husband admits he’s seeing someone else. The wife asks why, and he explains that his lover—referred to as the girl—is easier than she is. The wife tries making sense of the situation, referencing astronomers and poets.