"Is that piano advice?"
"It's marriage advice wearing piano clothes." Estelle nodded toward Felix and Vance's retreating scarf. "He loves you. He also loves being useful in a place that still says his name like it owns a share. Those loves can share a house. They cannot share a lie. Lies need their own guest room, and then they take the whole second floor."
Sloane ate an almond. Salt and oil. "I packed a thermos for an exit."
"I know. I was two rows up on the train and blessed with excellent hearing and no shame. Use the thermos for coffee Sunday with him instead. Exits are easier to cancel than regrets. Regrets keep the receipt."
Later, during a lull when the band played something slow and Audra rested her head on Porter's shoulder with the temporary peace of people who have not yet opened the thank-you notes, Maribel the barista was not present and yet somehow was—Sloane found herself hearing drink slow in her head like a metronome. She leaned toward Felix and said, under the music, "If you walk the office, I want the full report. Crack in the plaster included. No highlight reel for Vance's benefit."
"You'll get the unedited cut," Felix said. "Including how much I might want it anyway."
"That's the deal," she said. "Wanting out loud."
That night in the short childhood bed, Sloane and Felix lay awake listening to the old house settle—pipes, wind, the refrigerator's distant opinion. They did not make love. They did not perform reconciliation for the benefit of the quilt or the photographs waiting to be taken tomorrow. Felix whispered that he would walk the office and then try to find a sentence for Vance that was neither cruelty nor surrender. Sloane whispered that she would rewrite her toast so it was not a covert argument with his uncle disguised as celebration. Neither slept well. Both slept some, which counted.
Friday night, after the barn and the almonds and Vance's strawberry destiny, Sloane stood in the guest-room doorway and watched Felix hang his overcoat with the neatness of a man who believed order could be a love language. She almost told him it worked better when paired with disclosure. Instead she sat on the too-short bed and took off the black heels, flexing her toes against the old rug.
"Audra looks happy," she said.
"She is. Porter's a good egg. Flour and all."
"I keep waiting for the weekend to turn into a trap with gift wrap."
Felix sat beside her. "It might. Or it might turn into a long hallway with doors we can choose not to open yet. Estelle would like that metaphor. Hallways are her native terrain."