Mei's tears came without drama — quiet, efficient, the tears of a woman who had rehearsed confession in the shower and still found the real version unrecognizable. "I wasn't trying to destroy us. I was lonely. You were gone so much. The promotions. The travel. I felt like a roommate you kissed goodbye."
"So you found a roommate who kissed you hello."
"That's not fair."
"Fair." Marcus stood again because sitting felt like consent. "Fair is telling me before our six-year-old models his shirt for me. Fair is not letting Nora become the messenger of your affair."
Mei flinched. "She didn't know what she was saying."
"That's the point," Marcus said. "She never should have had anything to say."
They did not go downstairs immediately. They sat in the wreckage of early evening and spoke in the careful sentences of people trying not to shatter glass while standing inside it. Marcus asked questions. Mei answered some of them and failed others. Daniel had started as coffee after a late campaign meeting. Then drinks. Then a hotel near the airport when Marcus was in Dallas. Then, twice, this house — this bed, this closet, this air that still smelled faintly of Mei's lotion and Marcus's aftershave and the detergent they both used because they had once liked matching the small things.
Marcus thought of Nora downstairs with her coloring book, coloring inside lines that adults had drawn for her, believing the upstairs conversation was about work shirts and professionalism and ice cream. He thought of the navy silk tie around her small neck. He thought of how innocence could walk into a room carrying the exact shape of a marriage's collapse and still ask about dessert.