“What man?”
Alicia did not answer. Miles stood between them in a jacket that was not his father’s, still smiling, the watch loose, the backyard green behind the glass, the morning not quiet anymore and not finished.
Daniel stood up. The stool scraped. Miles flinched at the scrape and not at the question, because the question had not landed in him yet. Alicia said his name once, Daniel, and he did not take it. He looked at the office door down the hall. The office was hers, the small room with the good light where she did billing for the clinic three days a week and, on some Saturdays, other work he had not named.
“Miles,” Alicia said. “Go put that on the chair. Wash your hands.”