On the day Anja Aropalo decided to die, the weather was as sweet and dense as a web of sugar. It was August, and still hot — even the nights were hot, but dark, like summer in the south. Anja woke up in the morning with a clear thought: her plan had to be carried out today. No more hesitation or cowardice. Today was the day.

Anja Aropalo had been lonely for two years. Loneliness like a stabbing pain under her breastbone ever since her husband left. She could feel it spreading into her whole body; a longing like a strangely physical hurt, a peculiar pain that she couldn’t pin down, a continuous ache. It didn’t usually make her cry, except sometimes at night, when she rolled onto her side and groped at the empty space beside her. Mostly it just ached.

Anja was walking home from the store. The thought she’d had in the morning had, over the course of the afternoon, strengthened from an idea to a decision. She had run her usual errands in town, stopped at the grocery and the pharmacy on her way home. Bread, cheese, milk for her coffee, some meat for dinner. And Doxal. The pills were at the bottom of her purse. Ninety pills, each one in a clean blister pack. Depression, the prescription said.

It had been surprisingly easy to get the medication. She had made an appointment, gone to the health center, and told the doctor about her life. The doctor had suggested antidepressants and Anja had nonchalantly mentioned that she’d prefer the older type of medication — Doxal, perhaps, or Triptyl. “The new depression drugs make me feel really ill, I’m afraid,” she said. “Side effects.” They exchanged a look of commiseration.

The doctor wrote a three-month prescription for Doxal. “It’s nice to have a patient who knows what’s good for her and takes responsibility for her health,” the doctor said as they shook hands. Anja avoided his gaze, walked out of the room and out of the health center without looking back, sped up, and walked quickly along a road lined with blooming horse-chestnut trees until the shame started to fade.

The visit to the health center had been in June, and now it was August. Something had made her put it off. First there were the lilacs in bloom. She ought to see them. Then two weeks for the strawberries — till the end of June, she thought. No one wants to die during strawberry season. Now the air was turning heavy under the weight of the approaching autumn. Extravagant banks of peonies swaggered along the side of the road, their ponderous white heads too large for their thin stems. The thought of how trivial it all was still lingered at the edge of her consciousness, but the warm sunlight reduced it to a faint trace. This is my reality, she thought. This is what I’ll leave behind: a whole life of walking to the store and walking home again. Autumn will come, and winter and spring and summer again, along with everyday tasks like these, always the same.

But the trees. The birches with their slender white trunks and the apple trees that had blossomed in May, painfully vivid. There had once been a thick forest here with just a footpath through the moss, then a cart road. Now it was a gravel road, and only a few of the old spruces were left, their tops stretching toward the deep-blue arch of the sky. What did it matter whether a person made a path for herself? She’d still be in the woods. You’re supposed to cut a path for yourself through time; to find some meaning, some way of making sense of life even as it slips through your fingers. Then just when you’re becoming yourself, when you reach a place that defines and delineates your life, you’re supposed to give it all up and reach for something else. Anja sighed and stopped to look in her shopping bag for something to drink. I’ll water the roses as soon as I get home, she thought, feeling guilty about the buds drooping in the heat of the veranda.

The sun was burning Anja’s neck and making her ears ring, and she felt infinitely weary. Life was full of these heavy moments, just waiting for time to pass, to get home, to close the blinds and make the food she’d planned to make, and eat it, and then wait for night to come. But night wouldn’t come now, not for her. First I’ll water the roses and make something to eat, she thought. Then the pills.

She was met at the front door by a flood of sunny, dusty stuffiness. The houseplants were wilting. She hurried to open the living-room windows. The air stood like a humid wall just outside the glass, hovering over the glowing geraniums. It was perfectly quiet. The clock on the wall ticked, each second spreading outward in a circle. Anja wiped the sweat from her forehead. The roses. She got the watering can from the kitchen cupboard and went back onto the veranda. She turned on the spigot next to the porch. The water sputtered through the hose, finally gushing into the watering can, sparkling in the sun. The roses seemed to sigh as they received the water. Drops fell like tears from their velvety petals. A bee, fat and clumsy with midsummer nectar, buzzed at one of the buds as if in a trance.

Her husband’s rubber boots were still in their usual place in a corner of the veranda. Anja shoved her feet into the boots. A pair of gray socks, felted from many washes, had been left inside them, still shaped like his foot. On winter mornings he would put his socks and boots on and sweep the snow from the driveway on his way to get the newspaper.

Anja stepped onto the lawn, the grass flattening under her feet. This is how I leave tracks, how I claim this space. I have this body, its outlines and open spaces. She walked across the yard to the vegetable garden and looked at the cabbages. The soil of the vegetable beds had lightened and cracked in the heat.

She hooked up the sprinkler and set it in the middle of the garden, next to a row of carrots. The lettuce and snap peas needed the most water. She picked up a bucket that lay moping at the edge of the field and sprayed it clean, then filled it with a few summer squashes and carrots. She could put the pea pods in the salad — and radishes, of course. The lettuce leaves looked wilted, but she picked a few of them, too. And onions.