"I'll tell her."
Jason turned off the pendant lights. The room sank back toward the shape it had worn when Rachel first entered, except now the candles still burned and the balloons still hovered and nothing could honestly be called dark. He blew out the candles one by one, a small domestic courage, smoke lifting in thin gray threads. Rachel watched him and loved him and understood that love was not going to be a key either.
"I'm going to say good night to her," she said.
"Wipe your face first."
She did, in the powder room, with a tissue and cold water and the ruthless light beside the mirror. The woman in the glass looked like someone who had tried to be two honest people and had become one dishonest one instead. She practiced a smile. It failed. She practiced a calm mouth. That, barely, held.
Sophie was under the quilt with the sharks, eyes too shiny, card on the nightstand beside a plastic dolphin. Megan sat on the floor with her back against the bed, shoes off, the wine dress pooled around her knees. When Rachel came in, both of them looked up with the same Brennan mouth, younger and older editions of a caution she recognized.