Brandon looked at the rows of noodle cups.

He looked at me.

He looked at the ring of relatives watching him, and I saw him understand, too late, that there was no good answer and no way out of the question.

“I gave her two hundred dollars,” he said.

The silence that dropped over the room was so complete that the faint clicking of the water boiler filled the whole space.

“Two hundred dollars,” Rosalind repeated, in a whisper, her outrage sliding into disbelief.