Donna waited until they were in bed, lit by one candle and the city outside their window, to let her mask slip and the worry show. She rolled against Matt beneath their thin sheet, draped her arm across his belly, and squinted at his bandage. “He did that with a cane?”

“He was out of his head. When Sandy stepped in, he went for her. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“The boys will tell everyone,” she said. “You haven’t fought in a long time.”

“Haven’t had to. How was work?”

“The usual,” she said. “Sums and more sums, and sums for dessert. Will the girls stay with us long?”

His back hurt. Not because of the fight; his back had been hurting lately, was all. “I know quarters are tight.”

“They can stay as long as they need,” Donna said. “I wanted to know if you saw them going back to their father.” She said the last word as if she doubted it applied.

“He’s worse than I knew.” Which was a lie. He’d just not seen how bad. Drank with him plenty, and worked beside him, beside the girls, for years both before and after the mother left. He rolled the sheets off him onto Donna so he lay bare to the darkness of their closed room. “I love you,” he said, and kissed her.

“Of course you do,” she said. He got out of bed. She didn’t ask why. If she’d asked, he would have said he needed a glass of water. That would not have been a lie, but it would not have been the complete truth. He did not know what he needed.

He tied the belt of his robe and opened the door to the living room slowly so the sound of the latch did not wake Claire. He padded past the couch. She curled strangely on the cushions under her sheet, her head propped against the armrest so if her eyes were open she could see the front door, and Matt’s. But her eyes were closed, and she was still.

He poured a glass of water he didn’t want to drink. By habit he went back to the living room to sit, then saw Claire beneath the blanket, and turned back toward the kitchen. “You don’t have to go,” Claire said. Her voice was low, but she wasn’t whispering. She sounded as flat now as she had in Sandy’s wagon. “This is your house. You can sit.”

“This might be my house,” he said, “but it’s your room for now.”

She shifted on the couch.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I knew he was an angry man.”

She sat up, keeping the blankets tight to her neck like a barber’s smock. “He’s sick.”

“I knew he drank. Looked like he kept the business together okay. That was all.”