Claire's hands were inside the coat pockets now, finding whatever lint and ticket stubs lived in Marcus's winter life. "He said he was going to end it. Before you arrived for the long weekend. Before the wedding planning got further. He said he owed me a real goodbye, not a text. I believed him because I wanted to believe that the man who held me while I cried about my mother was also capable of ending a betrayal cleanly. That was stupid. I came anyway. He put the coat on my shoulders when the wind came up. He kept looking at his phone for delay notices. When your train pulled in on time, his face did a thing I won't forget. And then you asked why I was wearing his coat, and I realized I had been cast as weather in a story where I thought I was a chapter."
Elena nodded once. The nod was not forgiveness. It was receipt of information.
"I want you to leave," Elena said to Claire. "Not because you're the only problem. Because I need to speak to him without an audience, and you have already said the true thing."
Claire stood. She took off the coat at last and laid it over the arm of the couch with a care that looked like farewell. Underneath she wore a black sweater and jeans, ordinary clothes for an extraordinary dismantling. At the door she paused.
"For what it's worth," Claire said, "I am sorry you found out like this. I am not sorry you found out."
Then she was gone, and the apartment contained only Elena and Marcus and the coat and the two wine glasses and the long corridor of what came next.