"I didn't do anything bad."
"No, honey. You didn't do one thing bad." Claire slid the shirt off June's shoulders and June stood there in her pajamas, small again, the gloves still clutched to her chest. Claire held out her hand for them, and June gave them up with a look of real grief. "Teeth," Claire said. "Go."
June went. She went slowly, looking back from the bottom stair at her father, and Wade made himself lift a hand to her and make his face do something that might pass for a smile, because whatever this was, it was not hers. Then she was gone, her bare feet thumping up the steps, and the bathroom door shut, and the water ran.
Claire stood in the middle of the family room holding a red flannel shirt and a pair of elk-skin gloves. She looked down at them as if she had been handed something she didn't know how to carry.
"Who's Danny," Wade said.
It did not come out as a question. He had not raised his voice. He had a way, when he was angriest, of getting quieter and slower, and his father had been the same, and Claire had once told him early in their marriage that it frightened her more than shouting would. He knew that and he could not, right then, do anything about it.
"Not with her up there," Claire said. "Please. Let me put her down. Give me twenty minutes."
"Claire."