"She said—" Carol stopped. She ran the water. "She said to tell you thank you. She said you'd know what for." She turned off the faucet and finally looked at Renée, and her pale blue eyes were wet and uncertain. "Renée. What's going on? What happened?"
Renée dried her hands on a dish towel. She looked at this woman, who had stitched her name on a stocking and gotten the accent wrong and fixed it without being asked, who had said very articulate, who had kept that photograph on the side table for eleven years, who had given her son's phone number to the girl with the sparkler because it never occurred to her that Renée would mind. Who had never thought very hard, Renée suspected, about what Renée might mind at all.
"You should ask Matt," she said. "It's his to tell."
"He won't tell me anything. He just says it's between the two of you."
"Then I guess it is."
She hung the dish towel on the oven handle, straightened it, and went back out into the dining room, where Ivy was explaining to her grandfather, at length, that a shepherd's most important job was to be sore afraid.
* * *
That night, after Ivy was asleep with Mrs. Fitzgerald under one arm, Renée came down to the den. Matt was sitting in the recliner again, in the light of the tree, with nothing in his lap. The Christmas lights he had been untangling a week ago were still in the bin in the corner, still knotted. Neither of them had touched them.
She sat on the couch, under the plaid throw, and she told him she had gone to see Lauren.
He took it the way she had known he would: first with shock, then with something that looked like fear, then with a long exhalation, as if he had been holding his breath for a week.
"What did she say?"