He nodded. The firelight made his dark-blond hair look almost copper, his blue eyes tired. The stubble along his jaw had darkened overnight. He looked like the man she loved and also like someone who had been carrying a second life in a bright bag.
"Can I say one more thing without it sounding like a bid for credit?" he asked.
"Try."
"When Toby walked in with that bag, part of me was terrified. And part of me — a small, exhausted part — was relieved. The secret had a body in the room. It couldn't stay theoretical."
Elise considered this. "Then thank Toby later in a way that doesn't teach him that rummaging in duffels is a moral good."
"Deal."
They did not make love that night. They did not perform closeness. They lay in the bed with a careful continent of sheet between them, and Elise read Natalie's letter one more time by phone light, and Daniel stared at the ceiling and named every way he had confused protection with possession of the narrative. In the bunk room, Toby dreamed whatever seven-year-olds dream when the mountains hold the house.
On the third day of the trip the sky cleared. The peaks came out like a held breath released. They drove into town for cocoa and a bookstore. Elise bought Toby a paperback about a fox. Daniel bought nothing, then bought a postcard of the local lake and, in the car, wrote Natalie's name on it and put it in the glove box without explanation. Elise saw him do it and said nothing. Some rituals were allowed to be private if they weren't secret.