AFFAIR WITH MY STEPFATHER

CHAPTER6

She took her time getting dressed. Not for him. Obviously not for him. She just — took her time.

The silk camisole she chose was the colour of a warm cream, tucked into tailored black trousers that sat high on her waist and made her legs look like a statement. Hair down. Simple gold at her ears. She stood at the mirror for a moment and looked at herself and thought: *Composed.* Yes. That.

It had taken twenty-two minutes to arrive at composed.

She came downstairs at seven and he was already in the kitchen — white shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearm at 7 in the morning like that was a reasonable thing to do to another person. Coffee in hand, reading something on his phone. He heard her on the stair — she saw the small shift in his posture, the almost imperceptible straightening — and by the time she cleared the kitchen doorway he was looking at his phone again.

She walked in. Got a mug. Poured coffee. Stood at the counter three feet from him and said "Morning." Like the word did not taste specifically of last night.

"Morning," he said.

His voice was controlled. Rebuilt. She could hear the effort in the evenness of it and she respected it the way she respected good architecture — acknowledged the craft, noted the load it was bearing.

She stirred her coffee. The kitchen was quiet. Outside, birds. The ordinary sounds of a house in the morning, indifferent to everything that had happened in this room six hours ago.

She reached past him for the sugar.

Not because she couldn't reach it from where she was standing. The sugar bowl was three inches from his elbow and she was standing two feet to his left and the geometry of the situation was perfectly clear to both of them. She reached past him anyway — her arm crossing the space in front of him, her shoulder briefly entering his orbit — and she felt him go very still beside her, the way a person went still when they were working very hard at stillness.

She added sugar to her coffee. Stirred. Said nothing.

He said nothing either, but the silence was choking, was tense. She leaned against the counter and looked out the window at the garden and drank her coffee and let the silence be what it was. He stayed where he was. Neither of them moved to leave and neither of them addressed why.

After a moment, he finally spoke.

"The Texas project — you mentioned it at the rehearsal dinner, about the structural constraints." He asked, taking a sip from his coffee.

"Actually, I am surprised you remembered," she responded with a shocked expression on her face.

They talked for a while. He asked a follow-up question that showed he had been listening more carefully than the conversation had required, picking up something she had said almost in passing. She tilted her head and looked at him.

"You paid attention."

"I pay attention to most things," he said.

She let that sit for exactly the right amount of time. "Most things?" She repeated. "Or? Specific things?"

He looked at her over the rim of his mug. Long. Level. The look of a man who was not going to answer that question and was communicating the refusal with complete clarity and no hostility whatsoever.

She smiled at her coffee.

They talked for another twenty minutes. About her work, about the city, about a building she had passed on the drive from the airport that she had opinions about. He listened. He pushed back, once, mildly, on something she said about cantilevered structures and for approximately four minutes, they had a genuine argument about load distribution that had nothing to do with last night and everything to do with the fact that they were, underneath everything, two people who found the same things interesting.

She noticed the exact moment he noticed that.

He went slightly quieter after it. Like the realisation had cost him something. She did not point it out.

His phone buzzed. He glanced at it — something from work — and the professional mask dropped back into place with the efficiency of a man who had been using it for years.

"I have a site meeting at nine," he said.

"Go," she said.

He pushed off the counter. Rinsed his mug. Set it in the rack. Every moment deliberate and orderly. He was almost at the kitchen doorway when he stopped.

He didn't turn around.

"Last night —" he started.

"Was last night," she said. Even. Easy. "Go to your meeting, Ethan."

A pause. And then he left.

She heard his footsteps on the stairs. The sound of water running. A door. And then, ten minutes later, the front door.

The house settled into quiet.

---

Linda came downstairs at half past seven, bright and loose in her dressing gown, moving immediately toward the coffee with the unhurried happiness of a woman in her own home on the morning after her wedding.

"Where's Ethan?"

"Site meeting," Zara said. "He left about ten minutes ago."

Linda smiled.

"He works too hard. I keep telling him." She poured her coffee and turned and looked at her daughter with the particular warm attention of a woman who was paying attention. "You look nice. Did you sleep well?"

Zara smiled at her mother over the rim of her mug and said, "Like a baby."