Julian caught it. He always caught things like that. It was one of the things about him, the attentiveness, the way he listened not just to what was said but to the shape of what was said, the space around the words.
He had been that way from the beginning, and it had unnerved her once, being so thoroughly listened to, and now she could not imagine being with someone who did not.
He looked at her directly now. The look of a man who has heard a door opening and is trying to see what is on the other side of it.
"What do you know," he said slowly, "that I don't?"
Amara pressed her lips together for just a moment. Not long, just the half second of a person who is choosing their entry point, the way you choose where to step into a river.
"Well," she said.
"Amara."
"She met someone," Amara said.
The two words landed in the room with the particular quality of small stones dropped into still water, quiet on arrival, but sending circles outward in every direction.
