"I might, someday. Not this week."
They lasted through October on Patricia's rules and a tenderness with Sophie that was almost formal. The aquarium happened on a gray Saturday, just the three of them, sharks moving like slow decisions behind glass. Sophie held both their hands for a while and then let go to press her palms to the tank, and Rachel and Jason stood side by side not touching, watching their daughter's reflection superimposed on a fish the size of a commitment. In the gift shop Sophie asked for a stuffed ray and then said, carefully, "Are we still a family if you don't sleep in the same room?"
They had prepared for versions of this. Jason crouched. "Yes. A family is the people who keep showing up for you. Rooms are details."
"Details are where people live," Sophie said, an eerie, borrowed intelligence, maybe from Megan, maybe from a book. Then she shrugged, eight again. "I want the ray."
They bought the ray. They drove home over the hills with the mountains doing their indifferent beauty. Rachel, in the passenger seat, thought of Andre's apartment, the particular plant by his window, the way the light hit at four, and she missed him with a sharpness that made her ashamed, because she was also, in the same breath, glad to be the woman in this car, the mother of the girl with the stuffed ray, the wife of the man who had crouched in a gift shop and told the truth in a size a child could hold. The missing and the gladness did not cancel. Patricia had said they might not. Rachel had hoped the therapist was being dramatic. She was not.
November arrived with a dry cold and a decision that was not yet the decision. Jason's company asked him to take a six-week rotation in Wyoming after the new year, a promotion folded inside it like a prize that had not read the room. He brought it to the counselor's office instead of accepting it in the parking lot of his pride.