Martha told him, without heat, that he needed to stay somewhere else — that Irene needed to be able to heal inside her own house without lying awake measuring the mood in the next room, without the particular exhaustion of a child bracing all night against the walking-on-eggshells air that his secrets had filled their home with for months.

Mark did not fight it.

He packed a bag, and he moved into his brother’s spare apartment over in Bethesda, and for the first time in a long time the house in Arlington was quiet in a way that let a person rest.

Chapter 18 — Every Appointment Herself

Over the following month, Martha rebuilt her whole life around her daughter’s care, and did it without apology.

She filed for formal medical leave from the firm — the same firm whose layoffs had been, in Mark’s telling, part of why he’d stayed silent, and Martha noted the bitter symmetry and stepped through it anyway.