Aaliyah remained standing. "Elias wore your cardigan. And your necklace. He carried your makeup pouch into my laundry room and asked his father if he looked fancy."
Ruth's face did something complicated—pride and horror and a tenderness so naked Aaliyah had to look away from it.
"I told him he could try the necklace," Ruth said. "The cardigan was my fault. I left it on the chair in the conference room because my shoulder was hot and I forgot. I forget things now." She touched her temple lightly, almost apologetically. "He must have found it when Marcus took him by after a meeting. I'm sorry. I know how that must have looked."
"It looked like my husband was cheating on me with a woman who wears my mother's perfume."
Ruth closed her eyes. "God."
"Yeah."
They sat with that for a while—Aaliyah finally taking the chair opposite, Ruth on the sofa, the broken courtyard fountain visible through the sliding glass door like a metaphor neither of them needed spelled out.