Toby said, still innocent, still holding on, "You told me not to open it yesterday."
Elise stared at her husband as if the cabin itself had tilted. "Why did you bring another woman's bag on our family trip?"
Daniel rose slowly from the hearthstones, quietly, beginning to stand. "Let me tell you what happened."
He did not tell her then.
Toby, sensing the weather change in the room without understanding its name, hugged the coral handbag tighter. The sunglasses slipped; he pushed them back up with one finger the way he had seen women do in movies. Elise's hands had gone white around the egg carton. Daniel stood between the fire and his family with the look of a man who had rehearsed a speech for months and discovered, in the moment of delivery, that rehearsal meant nothing.
"Toby," Elise said, her voice careful, the voice she used when a glass was about to fall, "put the bag on the coffee table. And take off those glasses before you walk into a wall."
Toby obeyed the second command first. The sunglasses came off, revealing the bright mischief that usually lived in his face and was already dimming. He set the coral handbag on the low table as if it might bite. The tan sunhat remained, ridiculous and tender on a seven-year-old's head.