"I was in Raleigh for the site walkthrough. I came back Thursday night. You said Lily had soccer and dinner was leftovers."
"I know what I said."
The light went green. Aaron drove. Lily hummed a song from music class that had too many hand motions for a booster seat and performed them anyway, purple backpack strapped beside her like a small loyal animal.
They pulled into the driveway of the two-story house they had bought four years earlier with the particular pride of people who believed a mortgage was a kind of vow. Blue shutters. A maple that dropped its leaves onto the lawn in a seasonal argument Aaron usually raked on Sundays. Simone unlocked the door. Lily kicked off her sneakers and ran toward the living room television with the hunger of a child who had been good too long.
Aaron set his keys in the dish by the entry. The sound was small and final.
"Upstairs," he said to Simone. "Now."
Their bedroom faced the backyard and the maple. Late light striped the white duvet. Simone stood near the dresser where their wedding photograph still smiled as if photographs were allowed to be naive. Aaron closed the door. He did not raise his voice. He never needed to. He took off the charcoal jacket and laid it over the chair with a care that looked, from a distance, like ordinary tidiness and was not.
"Who."