A remark about dinner.

A correction of Marlowe’s housekeeping.

A comment, delivered with a smile, about how tired Marlowe looked, how thin, how she really ought to take better care of herself for Desmond’s sake.

Each one was small.

Each one, taken alone, would have sounded petty to complain about — and Junia knew that, engineered it that way, kept every individual jab just under the threshold where Desmond would have to choose sides.

And so Marlowe was left in the impossible position of the person being nibbled to death: enduring a hundred small wounds, none of which she could point to as the outrage that justified a stand, watching her husband retreat into the television every time she tried to name what was happening.