"No. Stay."
Jason did not raise his voice. That was the thing Daniel would remember later, the quiet of it, the way his younger brother could sound on a job site when a measurement was wrong and everyone needed to stay exactly where they were until he understood how wrong.
Rachel turned toward him, and the turn was a mistake because it put her back partly to her daughter and fully toward the man she had promised to love in a church with these same parents in the second pew. Her eyes shone. The mascara had not failed yet. It would.
"Jason, don't do this in front of everyone."
"You brought him into our home."
The sentence landed on the marble and the balloons and the gifts and did not bounce. It was not an accusation so much as an inventory. Our home. The white cabinets he had let her choose. The sectional they had argued about for a month. The artwork held up by magnets shaped like the state of Colorado. The cake. The child.