Jason had a socket wrench in his hand. He set it down with care, because care was what he had when he did not have peace. "Did you want to leave with him?"
"I wanted to feel the way I felt before I was accountable. I don't want the life that comes with it. Those are different wants. I'm only trustworthy if I keep saying them out loud before they become tickets and texts."
He nodded. His mouth was a line. "Patricia first thing Thursday. And Rachel — if you go sit in the back row of his life, we are done. Not because of the chair. Because of the sneak. I can live with wanting. I can't live with a scavenger hunt."
"I won't go."
"You already didn't. That's why we're still talking."
It was the nearest thing to mercy he had offered her since October, and she did not spend it. She skipped the panel. She went to Sophie's class play instead, a twenty-minute epic about the water cycle in which Sophie was a cloud with a speaking part. Jason sat beside her in a folding chair too small for his shoulders. When Sophie said, "I gather and I let go," in a costume made of cotton balls, Rachel's eyes burned. Jason's hand found her wrist in the dark of the cafetorium. He did not lace their fingers. He circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger, a pulse-check, a claim, a question. She turned her hand and held on. Sophie, squinting into the lights, saw them and smiled so suddenly she almost forgot the next line, and the teacher mouthed it from the wings, and the water cycle continued, gather and release, gather and release.