JULIAN

I drove.

Lena was in the passenger seat with the particular and quiet quality of a woman on the other side of something, not the specific and exhaled quality of the restaurant after Cassie, not the particular and releasing quality of that. This was a different quality. More interior. The specific and deeper quality of a woman who had been somewhere that cost her in the particular and specific way that only certain places can cost a person, the places that have the specific and long history of the costing.

The house receded in the mirrors.

I drove.

I did not speak.

I was not managing the silence, I...