Ryan exhaled through his nose. His shirt was wrinkled across the front, his jaw unshaven, his expression empty in a way that did not look like the emptiness of a tired man. It looked rehearsed. Like something he had been arranging in his face for a while, arranging in the car on the way home, checking in the rearview mirror.
Then he said it.
“Divorce.”
Claire did not move.
For one strange, suspended second, the refrigerator hummed and the baby breathed against her neck and the kitchen light buzzed overhead. It was remarkable what the body noticed when a marriage was being broken in half. The small grease spot on Ryan’s shirt cuff. The slight list of a serving spoon in its bowl. The pressure of her son’s cheek against her collarbone, warm and solid and real.
