"Paper is fine. I want it before you talk to him again."
"I won't talk to him until you've read it."
Jason nodded. He picked up the empty recycling bin, then set it down, a man who had run out of chores and not out of pain. "Sophie asked me in the kitchen if the tall man was a boyfriend. She used the word like she'd heard it on a show. I said he was someone Mommy knows from work who should not have been at the party. I didn't say more. If you're going to say more, we say it together, and we say less than we want to. She's eight. She gets the truth in pieces that fit in her hands."
"Agreed."
"And Rachel." He looked at her then, the hazel eyes bloodshot, the stubble darker in the daylight, the pale-blue shirt from last night shoved into jeans, a husband and not a symbol. "If you go to him, don't do it slowly. Don't make me the place you rest between visits. I can survive being left. I don't think I can survive being a waiting room."
She felt the sentence go through her and stay. "I hear you."