"I want him gone," Carlos said finally. "From this house. From any sentence that includes my children's names. From your phone. From the foundation events if that's what it takes."
"I already ended it," Amara said. "Three weeks ago. After the last time. I told him it was over. The watch — he left it. I meant to... I meant to put it in a bag and return it. I forgot. Or I didn't forget. I don't know which is worse."
"You weren't going to return it," Carlos said. "If you were going to return it, it wouldn't have been beside the bed where Julian could find it like pirate treasure."
Amara had no defense that did not sound like another performance. She looked at the math workbook and felt the absurd cruelty of fractions surviving while her marriage took inventory of its wounds.
Upstairs, Sophia stood on the bathroom stool and supervised Julian's toothbrushing with the gravity of a senior officer. She did not understand the weather downstairs, but she understood that Dad's voice had gone quiet in the way it went quiet when the car made a bad sound on the highway — not yelling, which would have been simpler, but the careful quiet of someone listening for damage.
"Why was Mommy scared?" Julian asked around foam.
"She wasn't scared," Sophia said, because older siblings sometimes lie to keep the floor from tilting. "She was surprised. Spit."
Julian spat. The silver watch was gone, confiscated, but the memory of its weight remained on his wrist like a ghost bracelet. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "The man who uses the back door has a shiny watch."