Margaret made a small sound — not quite a sob, not quite a protest. "Daniel. Don't. Please. I didn't come here to break your marriage. I came here because I had nowhere else."
"You have here," Daniel said, and the sentence was fierce and immediate and absolute. "You have always had here."
Allison flinched as if he had struck her with kindness aimed at someone else.
They did not sleep much that night. Daniel made up the guest room with sheets that smelled of lavender detergent and the unused quiet of a room that existed mostly for show. He carried Margaret's suitcase upstairs. He brought her a glass of water and the spare toothbrush from the hall closet. He kissed the top of her silver head the way he had when he was ten and she was the tallest person in the world and gravity still made sense.
Allison waited downstairs. She sat on the beige sofa with her feet tucked under her and her phone face-down on the cushion beside her, as if the device itself might testify. When Daniel came back down, he did not sit. He stood by the floor lamp with his arms crossed and his blue eyes hard in a way that seventeen years of marriage had rarely required.
"Explain," he said.