He and Claire had agreed, in the stiff careful voices they used with each other now, not to fight in front of Owen. They kept to that. They were polite at breakfast. They took turns at bedtime. Daniel slept in the guest room over the garage with the door closed and told Owen it was because his back was messed up from the long flight and the guest bed was firmer, and Owen accepted this. They saved the real conversations for after nine o'clock, behind the closed door of the master bedroom, low, so low that sometimes they had to lean toward each other to hear, which was its own kind of cruelty.
But the house was old enough to talk. The heating vent in the master bedroom shared a duct with the vent in Owen's room down the hall, which Daniel had known for seven years and forgotten. And their voices weren't always low. On the fourth night, Claire said something about the derecho, about the three nights without power, and Daniel's voice went up. It wasn't a shout, but it was louder than he meant. It was the first time. He said something about Owen being in the house, right down the hall, and how could she, and Claire started crying, and they both stopped at once and listened, the way you listen after you knock over a glass in the dark.
Nothing. The house was quiet.
When Daniel went to check on him half an hour later, Owen's bed was empty.