Jason's hands opened and closed once at his sides. He had the impulse, ancient and stupid, to put a fist through a man who had just spoken about his wife in the past tense of hope. Daniel felt the impulse without seeing it and shifted his weight, a brother's small edit. Jason did not swing. He was, even now, a man who could hold a measurement. He looked at the wedding photograph drowning in sugar and asked the question again, quieter, as if volume had been the thing preventing an answer.
"How long."
Rachel's eyes filled and did not quite spill. She stood in her own kitchen in a black dress and a camel coat and felt every month she had kept press against her teeth. If she said since last November, she would be telling the truth about the first drink after a donor reception, about a conversation in a parked car with the engine off so the heater would not make them honest. If she said since February, she would be telling the truth about the first time she had let Andre touch her, snow on the windshield, her wedding ring in her coat pocket because she had taken it off to wash ink from her hands and had not put it back. If she said she didn't know, she would be lying again, and the room had no room left for that.
"Later," she said. "I will tell you all of it later. Not with my mother in the room. Not with Sophie's door open at the top of the stairs."
"Your mother is in the room because I invited her to our anniversary," Jason said. "Remember the anniversary? Eleven years. The bakery wrote it in gold. It's under the picture now."
"I know what day it is."