“I owe you an apology,” he said, which was not what Leah had expected. “I laughed. I shouldn’t have.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Thank you.”
He exhaled. “I didn’t know he talked to you like that. I mean — my mom always acts like everything’s fine.”
Leah almost said your mom and stopped herself.
“That’s because fine is easier for her than honest,” she said instead.
He was quiet for a moment. “He talks to her like that sometimes too.”
Leah closed her eyes.
Of course he did.
She had known, in the abstract way you know things you have not assembled into a clear picture. The particular brightness Denise performed around Raymond, the way she monitored other people’s reactions to him before allowing herself one — these were not the behaviors of a woman in an equal marriage. They were the behaviors of a woman who had learned to take up very little space and call it love.