Sophie looked at the card as if she had forgotten it was in her hand. Purple marker. Glitter that had already shed onto Megan's dress. Inside, Rachel knew, because she knew her child's sentences, there would be something like I love you to the moon and also the kitchen. Sophie did not offer it. She held it against Megan's shoulder like a passport.
"Who is that man?" she asked. Not Jason's question. A simpler one, and therefore harder.
No one rushed to name him. Andre closed his eyes for half a second, a wince he did not bother to hide. Rachel said, "A friend from work," and heard how thin it was, how the word friend snapped under the weight of the bottle on the island and the dress and the hour. Jason heard it too. He laughed once, a short sound with no humor in it, and the laugh made Sophie bury her face.
"All right," Daniel said. He had always been the older brother who could walk into a fight and make it a task. "Here's what's going to happen. Megan takes Sophie upstairs. Mom and Dad, you're going to sit, or you're going to step onto the porch, but you're not going to conduct a trial in the kitchen. Jason." He waited until his brother looked at him. "You want him to stay, he stays in the living room, and you and Rachel talk where the kid can't hear every word. Or everybody leaves and you do this tomorrow. Those are the options that don't make this worse."
"It's already worse," Jason said.
"Then don't make it a story she tells a therapist when she's twenty."