Until a beige cardigan on a five-year-old's shoulders.
Marcus found her in the kitchen twenty minutes later. Elias was in his room, the door half closed, the murmur of a picture-book CD drifting down the hall. Marcus stood in the doorway with his hands empty and his navy polo wrinkled at the collar where he had been pulling at it.
"I was going to tell you," he said.
"When?"
"When she got worse. Or when you asked. I don't know. I kept waiting for a right time that didn't come."
"Worse," Aaliyah repeated. She shut off the faucet. Water beaded on her wrists like a second skin. "What does worse mean?"
Marcus came into the kitchen and stopped at the island, as if the quartz were a border he was not sure he had permission to cross.