Damien turned forty on a December morning in the estate, which was a different occasion from the thirty-fifth birthday on the coast, in the way that forty is a different number from thirty-five.
Thirty-five had been arrival, the inheritance resolved, the marriage real, the first year finding its shape. Forty was something else. Not a milestone with the same dramatic architecture, but a number that carried its own weight, the specific weight of a man taking stock.
He said nothing about the birthday until the morning of it, when he came downstairs and found the kitchen arranged in the way of things that had been arranged for someone, the particular quality of a prepared morning that Mrs. Aldren produced for occasions.
He stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at the arrangement.
“It’s a
