He stood so suddenly the chair rocked. "I need you to leave the room. I need twenty minutes where I do not look at you. Then we are going downstairs and we are going to make dinner for our daughter like people who can still perform parenthood, and tonight after she is asleep you are going to answer every question I have, including the ones I have not thought of yet. And Simone — if you contact him tonight, if you warn him, if you soft-pedal what this is, I will know. Do you understand me."
"Yes."
She went to the door. Her hand on the knob looked like a hand that had forgotten how to open ordinary things. "Aaron. For what it's worth — I am sorry in a way that does not fit inside the word."
He did not answer. She left. The door clicked. Aaron sat again and stared at the late light on the duvet until the light moved and the shape of his life moved with it.
Downstairs, Lily had arranged her stuffed animals in a tribunal on the couch. The purple backpack slumped by the stairs like a witness released on its own recognizance. Simone stood in the kitchen with the refrigerator open, staring at milk and grapes and a foil-covered casserole from Sunday as if groceries could advise her. Aaron came down with his face rearranged into something a seven-year-old could survive. He washed his hands. He asked Lily about the volcano. He chopped carrots for a salad with a precision that made Simone look away.
At dinner Lily talked. She talked about recess and a boy who could burp the alphabet and Ms. Patel's new glasses. She did not mention Isaiah. Children know weather. They do not always name the storm.
After baths and pajamas and one story and then another because Lily bargained with the skill of a tiny attorney, Aaron sat on the edge of her bed and kissed her forehead.
"Dad," she whispered. "Are you and Mommy fighting."