Weston was gracious all evening.
It was only after everyone left, in the particular silence of a cleaned-up kitchen, that he said, mildly, that I’d “monopolized” the table, that it had been “a little much.” He wasn’t angry.
He never needed to be angry; anger would have been something I could point to.
He simply made a small, cool withdrawal of warmth, and I spent the next week working to earn it back, and somewhere in that week I quietly decided to be smaller at the next dinner.
That was the whole method.
Not a blow.
A thermostat, turned down a degree at a time, until I’d forgotten the room had ever been warm.
I told myself this was marriage.
Compromise.
Two lives braided into one.