“That is an unkind thing to do to a man who believes he has already won.”

“It’s a fair thing.”

“Fair,” Arthur said, “and unkind.

They are not always the same thing.” He wrote a number on the corner of a folder in pencil and underlined it twice.

Frank came in at ten with a box of doughnuts under his arm, still in his barn coat, mud to the ankle.

“Nobody in this house has eaten since Sunday,” he said.

“I ate,” Claire said.