Only then did he look up. His face was open in a way that made Emily’s chest hurt, a clean hurt, not dramatic, the hurt of seeing a window in a room you had convinced yourself was interior. He was smiling with his mouth closed, as if a larger smile might scare the result.
“It’s ninety-three,” he said. “Is that right? I mean I checked. But is it right?”
The question was no longer mathematical. Emily let it be what it was for a second, and then she answered the part she could answer with certainty.
“It’s right,” she said.
Denise had gone very still. The gold watch ticked against the chrome and seemed louder than it had any right to be. She reached over and turned the worksheet, reading his column of checks as if it might be a contract with a clause she had missed. Her finger, clean and short-nailed, rested under the remainder two. She was, Emily saw, doing the division herself, quickly, the way competent adults do arithmetic they have not used since school and are surprised to find still living in their hands. Eighteen times five. Thirteen times seven. She was not slow. When she finished, the amusement did not return in its old shape. What replaced it was more unsettled, and more attractive, a look of someone whose map has been accurate and has nonetheless failed to show a road.