You occasionally find yourself idly thinking about how it could have gone right. Or, maybe gone isn’t the best word, because it suggests that nothing was under anyone’s control; the outcome is merely fate, or chaos theory. But assuming she’d been normal, assuming she hadn’t homed in on your soft spots, assuming she’d not been shot through with that dark, smoky core of poison, what would have happened? Any number of things. Maybe you and she and Val would have stayed a threesome, a polyamory success story. Maybe you wouldn’t have stayed together but you would have remained dear friends, a trio growing old parallel to each other. Or maybe it would have been messy and sad. Sometimes you wish you’d had the chance to find out.