Ben's expression softened slightly as she replied. He understood where she was coming from, because he'd had very similar thought patterns in the time since they'd parted ways that spring. Trying to do his best to make things easier on Nora, and easier on her — trying to carve out enough space for her to sidestep the pain they were both in every time they were around each other. How often he'd been successful in that endeavor was hard to say. Not often enough. Still, even though he understood, it hurt somewhere deep in his chest to hear it all put into words like that. He didn't like to look reality in the face so baldly, to confront the fact that — at least since January — pleasant memories with his daughter and his wife's company couldn't coexist. He'd spent all morning wandering around the little village and the surrounding countryside and trying to convince himself they could, someday, but sooner or later the voice of reason — which sometimes sounded like Aldous, or sometimes Art, or sometimes Ben himself — pointed out that this had never worked before, and nothing was different this time. He wanted it to work — wanted them to be a cohesive family again (maybe for the first time) — but wanting didn't make it so.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said in a rush — because that was right, that was the part to be sorry for. That was the mistake. The two of them had never been meant to be together, and by now they were broken beyond repair, and it had been a mistake to pretend that they weren't; a mistake to hold her like they loved each other. They didn't love each other — or didn't love each other enough, maybe. They didn't love each other in the sort of way that mattered, when it came right down to it. (And if half of him was hoping, even now, that she would contradict him — that she would say don't be sorry — then so what?)

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