“How could you not know?” she said.

He shrugged.

“Fuck that,” she said. “Tell me.”

In truth, he’d wanted to talk it through with her since the problem first came to his attention. His wife was an expert at coring the layers of Miles’s anxiety for nuggets of relevant truth. She saw him faster than he could see himself, which was how she’d managed to be right from the start—he was scared of her—and also why he hadn’t realized it until now.