"I know," Ruth said. "I've carried it longer than I carried most of my better decisions."
Aaliyah left before either of them could cry in front of the other.
Marcus came home on the seventh day because Aaliyah texted him three words—come home tonight—and because seven days was long enough for Elias to stop accepting soon as an answer and start asking whether Daddy was mad at Mommy or Mommy was mad at Daddy, which was a distinction too precise for a five-year-old to make by accident.
They put Elias to bed together, the old choreography rusty but intact: Marcus reading the fox book in the low voice Elias loved, Aaliyah adjusting the nightlight, both of them kissing the boy's forehead in the dark. In the hallway afterward they stood facing each other like people who had once known the steps to a dance and were no longer sure who was supposed to lead.
"I saw her," Aaliyah said.
Marcus nodded. He had known; she could see it in his face. Ruth would have told him, or Cody, or simply the fact of Aaliyah's car in a Tigard parking lot would have traveled somehow through the small nervous system of a secret.
"How was she?"