"I know, sweetheart."
Emma lay down on her side on top of the covers, still in the dress, and pulled her knees up and looked at the wall. Natalie sat beside her and stroked her hair, and after a long time Emma said, without turning around, in a voice blurred with exhaustion:
"I think you should tell her. If it was me, I'd want to know."
Natalie kept stroking her hair until she was asleep. Then she went downstairs and stood at the top of the basement stairs and listened to the crowd noise and the low murmur of the announcers, and did not go down. She went into the kitchen and sat at the table in the dark with Calvin Mercer's card in front of her, and did not sleep at all.
* * *
Adam came up the basement stairs a little after five in the morning, when the windows had begun to gray. He had slept, if he had slept, in his clothes; the navy blazer was gone, but the shirt was creased in a dozen places and his eyes were red. He stopped in the kitchen doorway when he saw her still at the table.