"Tell me a Natalie story I don't know," Elise said. "Not the crisis. The sister."
Daniel stared into the flames. "She taught me to parallel park by making me cry in a church lot when I was fifteen. She said if I could survive her coaching I could survive any woman I ever dated. She was wrong about that. You are harder in better ways."
Elise's mouth softened despite herself. "She made me a playlist the week before our wedding. Did you know that? Songs for when you drive me crazy. I still have it. I listened to it in March and hated her for dying and hated the songs for surviving."
"She told me she made it," Daniel said. "She was proud of the dramatic arc."
They sat with that. The cabin ticked and settled. Snow kept its counsel against the glass.
"I need you to understand something," Elise said after a while. "Suspicion is a poison. Last night, for twenty minutes, I imagined you with another woman. I imagined hotel keys and lies about late meetings. I imagined telling Toby his father had broken our family. That imagination happened inside my body. It will take time to leave. Even though the truth is not an affair, the fact that my mind went there so easily means you left enough shadow for monsters to breed."
"I know," Daniel said. "I will answer your questions as many times as you need. I will show you every statement. I will not tell you to stop being hurt because the explanation was noble."
"Good," Elise said. "Because nobility is not the same as intimacy. And I married you for intimacy, even when it's ugly."