Claire's mother had a face that showed everything it felt, which was the opposite of Nathaniel's face and the opposite of Claire's careful management, and when she opened the door of the Queens apartment and saw them both standing on the step with the particular combined energy of people who have come to say more than one important thing, her face moved through approximately six emotions before anyone said a word.
"Come in," she said. "Come in, come in, why are you standing on the step?"
The Queens apartment was smaller than the penthouse in the way that everything outside the penthouse was smaller, but it had the particular density of a home that had been lived in seriously for thirty years, photographs stacked inside photographs on the same surfaces, a smell of coffee and the faint gho
