“You did.” “I think part of me liked the way it sounded,” he admitted.

And that honest sentence mattered to her more than any apology could have, because it named the actual mechanism — not his mother’s confusion, but his own quiet appetite for a version of the world in which the house was his.

“Thank you for being honest about that,” she said.

“It doesn’t save our marriage, though, does it?” And Marisol answered with care.

“It helps the truth, Dorian.