My daughter asked her husband for permission to have dessert at my table.

I promised.

I don't know how I walked back down that hall.

I don't know how I stood in my own kitchen and handed Craig a container of leftover roast and said drive safe.

I don't know how I watched my daughter walk to the passenger side of that car and get in without looking back at me.

My husband, Tom, was at the sink when I came back inside.

He didn't ask.

He just turned off the tap and dried his hands and looked at me.

"How bad?" he said.

"Bad."

He set the dish towel on the counter.

"Does she want to leave?"

"I don't know.

She's scared."

He nodded once.

That was all.

He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down, and I sat across from him, and we stayed there in the quiet for a long time.

"We can't push her," I said finally.

"If we push her and she goes back and tells him — she said if he thinks she told us—"

"I heard you."

"Tom."

"I heard you, Sue." He looked at the table.

"I'm just sitting here trying not to get in my car."

I reached across and put my hand over his.

His jaw was tight.

He didn't move.

"We do what she needs," I said.

"Not what we need."

He turned his hand over and held mine.

"Okay."

But I couldn't sleep that night.

I lay in the dark and I went back through every Sunday since May.

Every hand over the glass.

Every loose dress.

Every reason she'd given for canceling, for leaving early, for not quite meeting my eyes when I asked how things were going.

I had asked.

I want to be clear about that.

I had asked her four times over the summer, in different ways, and each time she had smiled and said she was tired, or busy, or that Craig had been stressed with work but things were settling down.

I had believed her.

Or I had wanted to.

I wasn't sure anymore which one it was.

In the morning I called my son, Daniel.

He picked up on the second ring.

"Mom.

What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong.

I just wanted to talk."

A pause.

He knew me too well for that.

"Is it Hannah?"

I hadn't planned to tell him.

I'd told myself I would wait, that it was Hannah's to tell, that I didn't have the right.

But Daniel had been at that table last night.

He had asked about the traffic.

He had watched his sister move her plate to one side to make room for nothing, and he had said nothing, and I needed to know if he had seen what I had seen.

"Last night," I said.

"At dinner.

Did you notice anything?"

Another pause.

Longer.

"I noticed Craig," he said carefully.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I noticed him.

The way he — the dessert thing.

I almost said something."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because Hannah looked at me.