He kissed the tops of both their heads.

He tasted the shampoo Rosamund bought for them, the green one that came in a bottle shaped like a whale, because at some point in the last five years the buying of children’s shampoo had become something that happened in his house without him.

Sabina came down the hall in a silk robe the color of oyster shells, coffee in hand, hair already done at six-forty in the morning, which struck him for the first time as odd — that a woman who had nowhere to be by nine was fully assembled before dawn, every day, without exception.

“Darling.” She leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth.