They said he’d lost his mother when he was a boy and had never quite come back from it.

They said a lot of things. What I saw was a tall, still man at the end of the table who had not touched his dinner and had been watching my mother-in-law the way a doctor watches a symptom.

When Agatha’s hand met my face, he set his water glass down on the table. It made a small, deliberate sound.

Somehow, in that silent room, it was louder than the shattered cup had been.

“Is that what you consider proper discipline?” he asked. His voice was low and even and carried to every corner.

Agatha turned to him with a smile she kept in reserve for exactly these moments, smooth and untroubled, as though I had spilled something and she had merely sighed.