Hadnot signed on with Würzburg, rejoining old teammates Chad Baker and Henrik Lenz, and moving by this step from third place in the league to first. Of course, he also moved six hours by car from his estranged wife and his three-year-old daughter. The most immediate effect on my life was that Anke had to clear out of the club apartment. In the end, she moved home with her parents, about a twenty-minute bike ride away. I helped her clear out, which is how I first came to know her father, one of those retired old men who dresses in a jacket and tie every morning and afterwards does very little else. Most of the furniture belonged to the club, but he packed everything that didn’t into the back of a small sedan, a process which took perhaps an hour longer than it needed to. Meanwhile, Anke wept quietly in her empty kitchen. I left her to cry; it didn’t seem the kind of unhappiness I could console her for, either because I had caused it myself or because it had nothing to do with me. Our relationship had changed, that much was clear, though in some ways it only became more conventional.
