She held up a hand. The camel coat sleeve slid back and showed the thin gold bracelet he had given her the night before she flew east for the program—seven months ago, when the house had been theirs in a way that did not require footnotes.
"Who is she?" Nia asked him, not looking away from Simone. "And do not say friend. Do not say it's complicated. Do not say please. Tell me who she is and why my child knows her well enough to call her Miss and why there is a moving day I was never invited to understand."
Marcus closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet at the corners in a way that made Nia want, against her will, to soften. She did not soften.
"Her name is Simone Langford," he said. "She's our realtor."
The word realtor landed with the dullness of a half-truth. Realtors did not freeze in doorways as if caught. Realtors did not accumulate in a child's vocabulary like family.
"Our realtor," Nia repeated. "For our new house. Which I also did not know we had."