"Then why—" She stopped. Recalibrated. "Why was her bag hidden in your duffel under your clothes on our family trip? Why did you tell Toby not to open it? Why does it look like you've been carrying a secret instead of a keepsake?"
Daniel's throat worked. "Because it isn't only a keepsake. And because what I did with it — what I did for her — is something I never told you. Not when she was alive. Not after. I was going to tell you this weekend. Here. Because this cabin is where she—" He stopped, restarted. "I need to go back further than the bag."
Elise sat down in the wooden chair by the window. Snow tapped the glass behind her like fingernails. "Then go back," she said. "And do not leave anything out because you think I'm too fragile for it. I am not fragile. I am furious. Those are different."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He nodded once. Then he began.
Natalie's marriage to Greg Holloway had looked, from the outside, like a success story written for holiday cards. Greg taught history at a private school in Boulder. Natalie designed interiors for ski homes and condo lobbies, which meant she understood how to make cold spaces feel warm. They hosted dinners. They sent photos from hiking trails. When Elise and Daniel visited, Greg poured good wine and asked thoughtful questions about Toby's school.
What the holiday cards did not show was the way Greg's voice changed when the guests left. Natalie had described it to Daniel only once, in a parked car outside a grocery store in January of the previous year, the heater blowing stale warmth across their knees. Not hitting, she had said carefully, as if the absence of bruises were a kind of proof. Not that. But the other things. The inventory of her failures. The way he checked her phone. The money she earned that somehow became his to allocate. The nights he slept in the guest room as punishment for a tone he didn't like. The morning he locked her out in her socks because she had forgotten to buy his preferred coffee.