She looked at him. "If you hit him, I have to spend the rest of tonight worrying about you too. I can't carry another person tonight."
Mason's face softened. He nodded and sat on the floor beside her chair instead.
Brooke quietly began removing champagne glasses from the table, not because cleanup mattered but because she needed something to do with her hands. Natalie stood near the stairs, crying silently. Thomas remained by the fireplace, looking older than he had when he arrived.
Margaret knelt in front of Claire. "I am so sorry." Claire shook her head. "You didn't do it."
"He's my son." "He's my husband. Neither one of us controlled him." Margaret's eyes filled again.
Claire noticed how everyone looked at her as though she might break in a visible way. She almost wanted to reassure them. That instinct frightened her. Even now she wanted to manage the emotional temperature of the room, make sure no one became too uncomfortable because of something that had happened to her.
"Please don't make me comfort anybody," she said quietly. Margaret nodded immediately. "We won't." Upstairs, Ethan opened the bedroom door and stopped.
The room looked ordinary. Their bed was made. Claire's book rested on the nightstand. A sweater she had worn the previous evening hung over the back of a chair. On his dresser was a framed photograph from their honeymoon in California, both of them sunburned and laughing beside the Pacific.
He stood there longer than he intended. Then he pulled a duffel bag from the closet.
Packing should have been simple. Underwear. Shirts. Jeans. Toothbrush.
A jacket. Instead every drawer contained evidence of the life he had treated as permanent. His socks beside Claire's scarves. His running clothes under the shelf where she kept yoga pants. A dry-cleaning ticket she had picked up for him.
A birthday card she must have hidden badly behind a jewelry box. He did not open the card.
For six months Ethan had imagined consequences only in abstract form. If Claire found out, she would be devastated. If his parents knew, they would be disappointed. If Vanessa demanded more, he would have to choose. But abstractions had no smell, no furniture, no half-open closet doors. Consequences were easier when they were future tense.
Now his wife was downstairs with both families, and he was packing a bag in the bedroom where he had told himself repeatedly that he would eventually fix everything. His phone buzzed. For one reckless second he hoped it was Vanessa. It was a message from Claire.
Take your charger. I don't want you coming back tonight because you forgot something. He sat on the edge of the bed. The message contained no anger. That frightened him more than the shouting.
He typed, I'm sorry. He stared at the words, then deleted them. Nothing he could send was large enough. Downstairs, Claire's breathing had steadied. She was answering practical questions because practical questions were survivable.
Did she want someone to stay the night? Yes. Brooke would stay.