Simone looked at Marcus. Something passed between them—permission, or apology, or the exhausted solidarity of people who have been managing a crisis together. Nia saw it and felt her stomach turn.
"I can wait in the car," Simone said. "Or I can leave the keys and the file on the console and go. This was supposed to be tomorrow. You weren't supposed to—"
"I wasn't supposed to come home early," Nia finished. "I know. Surprise."
She walked past both of them into the living room. The sofa was still theirs. The curtains were still theirs. But the bookshelf had gaps where novels used to stand, and the coffee table was bare of the ceramic bowl Amara used for crayons, and the wall where the big abstract print used to hang showed a cleaner rectangle of paint, the ghost of what had been chosen and then unchosen.
Nia stood in the center of the room with her coat still on and listened to her own breathing. Outside, a neighbor's sprinkler started its evening cycle. Somewhere a dog barked once and stopped. California went on being California. Their marriage, for the moment, did not.
Marcus followed her as far as the archway. Simone remained near the foyer, a silhouette against the front light.