But he did not move toward his mother, or toward the cane, or toward the blind woman who now had no way to find her way from the table.

He reached out and caught Emily by the arm.

“Em, please,” he said.

“Don’t make this worse.” And that — Andrew’s hand on her arm, restraining not his cruel mother but his outraged fiancee, asking the victim’s daughter to be quiet for the comfort of the room — that hurt Emily more than anything Victoria had said all night.

Because in that single gesture, Andrew told her exactly where he stood, and it was not beside her.

Emily would think about that gesture for a long time afterward, because it clarified something she had been unable to see through two years of being in love with Andrew, and it clarified it in a single second.