"Five."
The word sat between them like a piece of furniture neither had ordered. Elena set the water glass down carefully. She thought of August — the August he claimed — when she had been in Chicago running a summer youth program at the museum and he had texted goodnight messages that arrived at eleven and sometimes at one, and she had told herself he was working late on a preservation grant. She thought of the weekend in September when he canceled a visit because of a site emergency in a town whose name she could not now remember, and how Claire's face in the apartment light made that town feel newly invented.
"Did you tell her about me from the beginning?"
"Yes."
"Did she know we were engaged?"
"Yes."