The words had a different quality now than they had had every other time he had said them this afternoon. They had lost their alarm and their disbelief. They were just words now. Just a name. The name of his mother's husband.
The name of the person who, come September, would sit at a table in this house and eat birthday cake with their children and occupy the strange and new and completely unprecedented position of being in whatever shape a word could be large enough to hold all of this family.
He shook his head. Not in refusal. In the gentle, helpless wonder of a man who has learned, once again, that life is considerably larger than any plan he has made for it.
"I need a drink," he said.
"I know," Amara said, already standing. Julian pulled her close, forgetting his drink, and looked at her, he did not say anything for a moment. He just looked at her face at the peace in it, the real, earned, unperformative peace, and something in him settled further.
