She had said yes on the Saturday evening.
It had not been planned. There had been no conversation about it ahead of time, no slow discussion of terms across the kitchen table, no weighing up of pros and cons. They had simply come to the end of another quiet afternoon — Lio asleep in the cradle after his bath, the curtains drawn, the side room lit only by the soft yellow lamp on the dresser — and Corin had stood up off the rug, brushed his palms down his thighs, and reached for his coat on the second peg.
And Erin, from the doorway, had heard herself say:
"You don't have to go."
She had not meant to say it. She had not, even, known she was going to say it. The words had come out of her mouth as cleanly and without permission as her feet had walked her across the rug a week ago, and once
