Everything is about to spill out: that first day in Lorenzo’s office with the music box, when I watched his long musician’s fingers and imagined them playing over my skin. The oldness I felt seeing Steven, only a baby yesterday, rush into his teens. Boredom after so many years of the same man, the same sex. Finally, my anger at Patrick’s passiveness, the meeting with Lorenzo after bumping into him at Eastern Market. The baby. My new passport.

Except, before I talk, I think.

I think all of these things, imagining the words bouncing off the tiled walls of our kitchen. In reality, there is no perpetual motion; all energy eventually gets absorbed, morphs into a different shape, changes state. But these words that I’m about to unleash, they’ll never be absorbed. Each syllable, each morpheme, each individual sound, will bounce and ricochet forever in this house. We’ll carry them with us like that cartoon character who’s always surrounded by his own dirt cloud. Patrick will feel them prick like invisible, poisonous darts.

The way things turn out, I don’t have to say anything at all.

“I think you should go with him,” Patrick says at last, as if he’s seen the whole story in my eyes. “With the Italian.”

I should be relieved, I think, that I didn’t have to say the words. Instead, I’m sick from having to hear Patrick say them, sick realizing his knowledge of who I am comes not from prying, but from years of intimacy. His voice is cold; an artificial chill sharpens its edges. I reach out and lay my hand on his arm, and two things happen.

His own hand covers mine. He also turns away.

We stand there, a middle-aged married couple in a kitchen, a frying pan from dinner soaking in the sink, the coffee maker ready to go into action when morning comes. Everything about this tableau is normal, the simple routine of a life together.

Finally, he breaks away. It’s nothing, really, only Patrick turning to busy himself by wiping a stray crumb from the counter or by checking the soaking pan. And at the same time, that break is everything. When he turns back to me, the V in his forehead seems deeper, almost branded onto his skin.

“Take Sonia,” he says quietly. “I’ll stay with the boys and figure out something.”

“Patrick, I’m—”

Now it’s his turn to console, and the hand he lays on me feels like a weight. “Don’t, Jean. I’d rather leave things”—he sighs—“I don’t know. I guess I’d rather we not go into it all. It’s bad enough knowing. Okay?”