Ethan's jaw tightened. His eyes moved toward his parents as though their presence had transformed a private betrayal into something unfair to him. "Can we talk upstairs?" "No."
"Claire."
"No." She took a step away from the table. "You brought her through my front door. You don't get privacy now."
Margaret covered her mouth with one hand. Thomas stood motionless beside her, his face darkening in slow increments. Natalie looked from Ethan to Vanessa, then back to Claire, visibly trying to understand whether there was any innocent explanation left to discover.
Vanessa's expression hardened slightly. Humiliation was overtaking fear. "He told me you weren't home," she said. Claire turned toward her. "And you believed that made this better?"
"That's not what I meant." "What did you mean?" "I meant I didn't know anybody would be here."
Claire stared at her. "Anybody? You mean his family? Or his wife?"
"Claire," Ethan said sharply. "Don't say my name like I'm the one embarrassing you." "I'm trying to keep this from getting worse." "You came home with another woman. How much worse were you planning for?"
Vanessa looked at Ethan again. "You told me you two were basically separated." The room changed. Claire's head turned slowly toward her husband.
"You told her what?" Ethan closed his eyes for a moment. "Vanessa, stop." There it was. A name.
Claire absorbed it with strange clarity. Vanessa. A real person. Not a suspicion, not an imaginary silhouette in the passenger seat of Ethan's emotional distance, but a woman standing six yards away wearing red lipstick in Claire's home.
"How long?" Claire asked. Ethan did not answer. "How long, Ethan?"
"This isn't the way to do this." "There is no good way to do this. There was a good way not to do it." Mason stepped forward from near the dining table. "Answer her."
Ethan looked at him. "Stay out of it." Mason's face tightened. "You made it my business when you walked in here with her."
"Mason," Claire said, but she did not know whether she was warning him or asking him to stay.
Thomas finally spoke. His voice was low enough to cut through everyone else's. "What have you done?"
Ethan looked at his father.
Thomas had asked him that question only twice before in his life. Once when Ethan was sixteen and totaled a car after ignoring a warning about black ice. Once when he was nineteen and lied about failing a college class. Both memories came back instantly, carrying with them the old reflex of shame.