She looked at him the way a person looks at a guard before speaking, a quick checking flick of the eyes, as if silently asking whether she was permitted.

I watched her do it again and again over the course of that dinner, and each time something in my chest pulled tighter.

Then, near the end of the meal, she mentioned, lightly, almost hopefully, that she was thinking of driving over to visit my aunt in Saint Paul the following weekend.

Gavin set his heavy silverware down on the porcelain plate with a slow, deliberate click.

“And who exactly,” he said, in a voice gone suddenly cold, “said that you can just pack up and leave whenever you feel like it?”