Ford frowned. Cash saying he'd been worse meant nothing in the grand scheme of things — at one point he had been unfathomably low, the sort of mental state people didn't usually survive. Saying he was doing better than that was saying nothing at all. So he'd been better, and he was snapping at Ford over nothing. The difficult thing was that Ford wasn't even properly sure whose death had caused this particular mood. There were three Lestranges (or nee Lestranges) in the death notices, but the newspaper hadn't listed everyone who had been injured, and Cash might just as easily have been upset about one of those. Or someone who he'd been close to that Ford had never realized. A year ago, after all, Cash had announced he was getting married to a girl he'd never spoken to Ford about even once, and apparently had decided to do so in order to protect a man he had also never mentioned. It wasn't as though Ford had ever had access to Cash's inner life, and he certainly hadn't had it in the past few months since they had tentatively rekindled their friendship.

"Your sister-in-law?" he guessed (and felt a little lousy for having to guess, but that was the state of things, wasn't it?) "Were you two — close?"

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