It’s confirmation, a slap, but I asked for it, didn’t I? No, in fact, I asked for an answer as to why, and he hasn’t provided it. I’m gathering my expression back into what I think must be the very closest reaction to the right one, neutral, icy, when he turns fully back around, planting his feet, committing to the conversation.

“It’s not, I’m not … You don’t need to worry about me.”

Something about the grind in his voice, the dark sharpness in his eyes, even as they’re studiously trained away from me, does make me worry.

“I’m not sitting around stewing,” he says. “I have a life. You know?”

“Of course,” I supply, something to say, anything.

“I make damn certain I’m not thinking about you. So—”

“But that’s exactly … Why? Why should it be so hard?”

I should let it go, I know, but this nagging thing, we’re at it now. Finally. If the tithe is good for anything, it’s for stripping away all the layers of politeness that stand between us and the truth.

I strip away all my coolness, while I’m at it. Fuck the right facial expression, the right words, the right action.

“What’s so horrific about me?” I ask. “I’m just…”

Oh, I hear my mother: a taker, a killer, a demon, a mistake.

“—a random person.”

“No. No, you’re not.” He shakes his head, fast, frowning deeply. “You’re Hugh’s wife. And my wife, she’s gone. It’s just me now, but—”

He bites back something, some word, some curse as his voice is smothered by grief. I understand it as clearly as if he’d given a four-hour lecture.

I’m an insult to Julia’s memory. Me here, her dead. Julia, with her pale curls and apple cheeks and laughing eyes. Every time I see her photo on Jo’s sitting room wall, I think she was someone I might have been friends with. Instead, I arrived on the day of her funeral. And here we are—Hugh, blithely enjoying family life, and me, oblivious to the pain around me, the foreign lady with her erratic strolls and her cluelessness and her untrained dog and her beautiful, living children. The very fact of me is repugnant.

He’s still watching me, breathing unevenly like he’s winded from a fight, and then he laughs.

It transforms him. He looks ten years younger. He throws his hands in the air.

“Are you really going to ask me to spell it out? I didn’t take you for one of those girls who feigns ignorance to rake in flattery, but maybe you are.” He swallows hard. “Maybe I will start to dislike you. God bless, Nina, I’m begging you, give me a reason to dislike you.”

My name. He’s said my name.