The letter came on the twenty-seventh.
He had been expecting it in the specific, sustained way of a man who has been checking the post every morning since Christmas Eve with the deliberate, mechanical quality of a task performed rather than anticipated. The holiday had passed in the particular, muffled way of a Christmas in a house where two people are waiting for something — the tree Maryanne had decorated with the specific, composed efficiency of a woman maintaining appearances for her own benefit rather than anyone else's, the meals prepared and eaten with the careful, minimal conversation of two people who have run out of the neutral territory required for ordinary exchange. He had called Daniel on Christmas morning for twenty minutes and had said very little of substance. He had sat
