They did not go to the aquarium that Sunday. Sophie woke with a stomachache that was not a lie and not quite an illness, the body's vote. They stayed home and built a fort out of the sectional cushions and let her be small. On Monday Jason went back to an office he barely saw, because the alternative was the kitchen. Rachel went back to the Collaborative and asked her director, a brisk woman named Helen who had survived worse than other people's marriages, for the rest of the week as leave. "Family," Rachel said. Helen looked at her face and did not require a category. Andre's consultancy was not in the building that week. He had emailed the campaign group a professional note about shifting a workshop. Rachel read it three times, hunting for a message that was not there, and then she deleted nothing and answered nothing.
Carol called on Tuesday. The conversation lasted forty minutes and healed nothing and mattered anyway. Carol wanted to know if Andre was the reason Rachel had skipped Easter. Rachel said Easter had been strep, which was true, and also that Andre had existed by Easter, which was also true. Carol cried. Rachel cried. Richard got on the line and said, "Your mother thinks if we had visited more —" and Rachel said, "Dad, you could have lived in the guest room and I still would have made this mess. Please don't let her carry it as a failure of casseroles." Richard was quiet. Then he said, "Jason is a good man." Rachel said, "I know." It was the refrain of her life that fall. I know. I know. I know. Knowledge had not been the missing organ.
Daniel came by on Wednesday with beer he did not open. He sat on the back step with Jason while Sophie practiced cartwheels in the grass, pink cardigan abandoned at last for a sweatshirt with a dinosaur. Rachel watched from the kitchen window, not eavesdropping, simply unable to stop seeing them: two brothers, one older and broader, their shoulders the same shape their father's had been. Later Jason told her Daniel's advice had been annoyingly simple. Get a lawyer so you know the shape of the cliff. Get a counselor so you know whether you're standing on it. Don't make Sophie the referee. Don't ask Rachel to be sorry in a way that entertains you. Decide what you can live with, and if you can't, leave like a father, not like a fire.
"I hated that he was right," Jason said. They were in the garage, the only room Sophie did not drift through. The letter was in a folder now, not on display, not destroyed. "I wanted a brother who would help me hate you efficiently. He offered me a clipboard."
"We can do the counselor," Rachel said. "And the lawyer, if you want the cliff mapped. I won't fight you for the map."
"I don't want a war. I want a life that isn't a trick." He picked up a screwdriver and put it down. "I called a counselor. Thursday. Both of us. If you don't want to go, say so now, because I am done interpreting silence as a plan."