It started over a door.
Specifically: Darius had begun leaving the study door closed more than open, which was the signal we had agreed meant *not now* and which I had been respecting entirely, except that on the afternoon in question I had walked past the closed door twice with a question about the territorial response letter and had not knocked, and by the time he emerged from the study I had convinced myself that the question was not worth asking anyway and had moved on to other things.
He found me in the kitchen.
He looked at the thing I was making — which was ambitious and unnecessarily complicated and which I had embarked on because I was working something out — and looked at my face.
"You had a question," he said.
"It's fine," I said.
"Sera."
"I worked it out."
"What was the
