"Are you in love with him?"
The question was cleaner than the question about time, and worse. Rachel closed her eyes. Behind her lids the kitchen remained, bright and gold-ballooned. She saw Andre's hands around a coffee cup in February, the way he had said her name as if it were not also a wife's name. She saw Jason on the morning Sophie was born, ridiculous in a paper gown, weeping and laughing in the same breath, promising a tiny red creature that the world would be kind or he would make it kind. Love was not a single instrument. It was a bad orchestra, and she had been conducting it with her eyes shut.
"I love you," she said. "I am not saying that to survive the next ten minutes. I love you, and I have been lonely next to you, and I let another man touch the loneliness until it had his fingerprints on it. I don't know if what I feel for Andre is love or a fire I built because the house was cold. I know I wanted him tonight. I know I wanted you to come home tomorrow and be her father and my husband and not ask why I was tired. I know those wants don't fit in one life. I haven't chosen. That's the ugliest true thing I can hand you."
Jason's mouth moved, not quite a smile, not quite pain. "You chose when you unlocked the door."
"I chose a night. I'm not pretending that's small."
"Don't." He looked at her finally, hazel and wrecked and still, somehow, the man who had hidden in a hallway for his wife's joy. "Don't manage me. I'm not your board."