Laura hated how accurate that was. She hated it in the grocery store when she saw Daniel's preferred brand of bread already in the cart—stocked by Rachel—and felt a flare of displaced rage. She hated it when Ethan said "Rachel says" with the same tone he once reserved for "Mom says." She hated it most on a Friday evening when she came home from therapy alone and found Rachel and Daniel on the couch with Oliver between them, a documentary murmuring, their postures mirrored in unconscious synchrony. Nothing romantic. Everything intimate. Laura stood in the foyer—again the foyer—and felt the old title rewrite itself across her vision.
She made noise on purpose: keys in the bowl, bag on the bench. They looked up. Daniel's face opened with welcome and caution. Rachel shifted to create space that Laura did not immediately take.
"How was Patel?" Daniel asked.
"She accused my jealousy of being grief in a trench coat," Laura said. "I gave her a good review."
Rachel laughed softly, then sobered. "Do you want us to move? The movie, I mean. Not—us."
"Stay," Laura said, and sat on the armchair, Chris's armchair, and watched the documentary without absorbing it. Oliver eventually crawled into her lap with the diplomatic neutrality of babies who loved whoever was warm. Laura held him and counted his breaths and let the costume of suspicion hang, for an hour, unused.
Suspicion did not vanish because a folder existed. It mutated.
Laura noticed how Daniel's hand brushed Rachel's when they passed the baby. Accidental. Necessary. Still a touch. She noticed Rachel knew Daniel took his coffee with too much milk, a preference Laura had spent years teasing him about. She noticed Ethan's easy affection for Rachel—hugs at the bus stop, requests for help with math—and felt the jealous child inside her adult body stamp its foot.