each concentrating on a piece of paper. Claire watched while I looked at it. “Their names are Alice and Ben,” she said. “They are twins.”
I asked their ages, and she told me. The dates fitted together before I wanted them to. “Are they mine?” My voice sounded unfamiliar. “Yes, Daniel,” she said. She did not make the answer gentler or harsher than it needed to be. She waited while I put the photograph back into its envelope.
Our separation had been quiet enough that I used to describe it as amicable. We had divided the furniture, signed the documents, and stopped calling. But quiet did not mean easy. Claire had spent our final year asking for conversations that I kept postponing. I worked for a building supplier, and I had learned to make every delivery problem sound more urgent than anything happening at home.
I remembered a Saturday when
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