Dana set the sweatshirt on the foot of the bed, slowly, the way you move when you have walked into something breaking. “Emmett,” she said quietly, “I told you months ago you had to tell her.” Her voice did not sound like a mistress. It sounded like someone who had been carrying a weight and was tired of carrying it alone. I looked between them, my nurse’s brain finally noticing what my wife’s heart had been too frightened to catalog. Dana’s eyes were not on my husband the way a lover’s are. They were worried, and something else. Familiar.

“Tell me what,” I said. The room had gone very quiet except for the steady beep of the monitor tracking my husband’s racing heart. Emmett opened his eyes and looked at me, and for the first time all afternoon there was no calculation in his face, only exhaustion and fear. “Corinne,” he said, “Dana isn’t a woman I’m seeing.” He swallowed. “Dana is my sister.”