Which response cost you less effort?” Dorian looked down at his coffee, unable to answer, because the answer was obvious to them both.

And there it was, the true engine of five years of marriage, named on a cafe table: not malice, not even really cruelty, but a thousand small acts of ordinary cowardice, each one choosing the person who would forgive him over the person who would fight him.

She had made herself easy to disappoint, out of love, believing her patience was a gift to the marriage.

And her patience had become, without either of them deciding it, the path of least resistance down which every conflict in the house was routed, until she was absorbing all of it and Gwendolyn none, for the simple reason that Marisol’s love had made her cheaper to let down.