He nodded too many times. Frank stood in the kitchen doorway, arms folded. Priya sat at the dining table with a legal pad, writing down what he took. Grant looked from one of them to the other and then back at Nora, and something in his face shifted, the way it shifted at work when a deal was going sideways and he needed to bring it back.
"Can we talk? Just us? Five minutes."
"You can talk here."
He sat down on the edge of the armchair across from her, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. The earnest posture. The airport-bag-watching posture. "I want you to know it's over," he said. "With her. It's done. It was done before—before Saturday, honestly, I'd told her it had to end, that's what you heard, that's what we were—" He stopped. "It was never supposed to happen. It started in January. She was helping me with the nursery plans, you remember, with the paint, and we got to talking, and she was—she's so unhappy, Nora. You don't know. Frank doesn't talk to her. Nobody sees her. And I was so stressed about the baby, about money, about being a father, and she just—understood. And it got out of hand. And I hate myself. I swear to God I hate myself."
It was a good speech. She could see that he believed every word of it while he was saying it. That was his gift.
"Tell me about the deed," she said.
He blinked. "What?"
"The interspousal transfer grant deed. Recorded June third. Tell me about that."
For a moment the earnest face held. Then it went very still. "I don't—that's something we talked about. You and me. Last year. For the baby."
"I said no."
"You said you'd think about it."
"I said no, Grant. And then in May you put it in a stack of papers behind a power of attorney and flipped past it while you told me a story about a paper plate."
He didn't answer. In the doorway, Frank shifted his weight.