Not Are you okay?
Not Can we talk?
Tonight wasn’t a good time.
I placed the phone facedown.
Then I drove home to Patricia.
She was in the kitchen when I arrived, standing at the counter with a dish towel over one shoulder.
At sixty-one, Patricia still had the same habit she’d had when we first married: whenever she was worried, she cleaned something already clean.
That evening, it was the coffee machine.
“You’re back early.”
I put the envelope on the kitchen table.
“The dinner didn’t happen.”
She turned around.
“What do you mean?”
“Geoffrey wouldn’t let me in.”
Patricia stopped moving.
For half a second, hurt crossed her face before she hid it.
“Why?”
“Allison’s family was there.”
“I know. That was the dinner.”
“He said I wasn’t coming in while they were there.”
She frowned.
“Those exact words?”
“Yes.”
She pulled out a chair.
