"He's seven," Calvin said.
"I know how old he is."
"He's seven, and he's learned that if he keeps his mouth shut, she gets it instead of him. That's not something he figured out on his own. We taught him that. Both of us." Calvin stopped. "Me too. I taught him that every time I watched it happen and kept my mouth shut."
Lorraine looked at him for a long moment. Something moved behind her face that he could not read.
"I want to be angry at you," she said finally. "I want to be so angry at you right now I can't see."
"You can be."
"I am." She pushed herself off the counter. "I am. But it isn't going to fix the part where I'm the one who did it."
She walked past him out of the kitchen. He heard her go into the living room and stop. Then he heard the small dry clink of ceramic, and he went to the doorway and saw his wife on her knees on the rug in her tan top and her pearl earrings, picking up the pieces of her mother's vase one at a time with her bare hands and laying them in her lap.
"Let me get the broom," he said.
"No."
"You'll cut yourself."
"Then I'll cut myself." She did not look up. "Go check on them. One of us should check on them."
He stood there a moment longer. Then he went upstairs.
***
Simone counted the money three times.