LENA

Marcus I had known, in the partial and uncomfortable way of knowing, the particular and limited knowledge of a woman who had understood that the man who had been her father's most trusted person had not been trustworthy in the ways that mattered and had not been able to fully account for what the untrustworthiness contained.

Cassie.

I stood in the hallway and I held the tea and I thought about Cassie in the specific and difficult way I permitted myself to think about Cassie, which was not often and not for long and with the particular and careful containment of a woman who had understood that some feelings,...