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"""Kevin stopped in the bedroom doorway because both of his sons were asleep, and for one disorienting second he was certain something was wrong.
Oliver lay on his side with one fist tucked beneath his cheek, while Noah had kicked one bare foot free of the cream quilt and rested it against his brother's ankle.
Neither boy was crying.
Neither was calling for him.
After six months in which bedtime had become a nightly negotiation with grief, exhaustion, and terror, the silence frightened him more than screaming would have.
Annie sat on the edge of the bed with her back partly turned to him, one hand resting on the quilt between the boys rather than on either child.
She had apparently heard him enter, but she did not move immediately.
Kevin's fingers tightened around the brass door handle.
"Are they okay?"
Annie glanced over her shoulder.
Her white maid cap had slipped slightly to one side, and a strand of blonde hair had worked loose near her ear.
"They're sleeping."
"I can see that."
His answer came out sharper than he intended.
Annie's face closed by a degree.
Kevin hated himself for noticing, and hated himself more because he did nothing to repair it.
He crossed the threshold quietly.
The bedside lamp cast a warm amber pool across the carved dark wood and the rumpled cream quilt, leaving the corners of the room in shadow.
The curtains stirred near the tall windows with the faint movement of air from a vent.
Noah made a small sound through his nose.
Kevin froze.
Annie lifted one finger without looking at him.
The gesture was so instinctive, so mildly commanding, that under different circumstances he might have been offended.
Instead he obeyed.
Noah settled again.
Kevin stared at his sons.
For weeks Oliver had refused to sleep unless the hall light stayed on and Kevin sat outside the door where he could be seen.
Noah had developed a different strategy.
He simply refused sleep altogether until exhaustion defeated him, sometimes after midnight, sometimes closer to two.
The pediatrician had given Kevin careful advice about routines and consistency.
The grief counselor had given him gentler advice about patience.
Three nannies had given notice.
One had lasted four days.
Kevin had started taking conference calls from the hallway floor.
He had learned which floorboard outside the boys' room creaked and which cartoon episode could distract Noah long enough for Oliver to brush his teeth.
He had also learned that a forty-two-year-old man could run a company employing more than three hundred people and still be defeated by two small boys wearing dinosaur pajamas.
Tonight he had been downstairs for forty-seven minutes.
He knew because he had checked the time twice during a call he barely remembered.
Now the boys were asleep before nine.
Annie rose carefully.
The mattress lifted beneath her weight, but neither child stirred.
She smoothed the front of her black housekeeping dress, then adjusted the white apron at her waist.
Kevin watched her do it and became abruptly aware that he knew almost nothing about her.
She had been working in the house for seven weeks.
He knew she drank tea instead of coffee, disliked the lemon furniture polish the agency supplied, and had once repaired a broken cabinet hinge herself because she got tired of waiting for maintenance.
He knew she spoke to the boys as though they were people rather than problems.
He did not know why she had stayed when everyone else left.
Annie stepped away from the bed.
Kevin moved aside automatically to give her room.
She stopped before reaching him.
For a moment they stood several feet apart in the amber light.
Kevin looked past her at the boys again.
"How did you get them to sleep?"
The last word almost failed him.
Annie studied his face.
Kevin wished she wouldn't.
He had become skilled at surviving condolences because condolences required almost nothing from him.
Thank you.
We're managing.
The boys are doing as well as can be expected.
He had used those sentences at the funeral, at the office, outside the school, in grocery-store aisles when people recognized him and suddenly looked embarrassed by their own happiness.
Annie had never offered condolences.
That had seemed rude at first.
Later it became one of the things he appreciated about her.
She glanced toward the bed.
"We talked."
"About what?"
"Nothing important."
Kevin gave a tired, incredulous breath that almost became a laugh.
"They don't talk about nothing."
"They're five."
"They negotiate like union lawyers."
That earned the smallest movement at the corner of Annie's mouth.
It vanished quickly.
Kevin rubbed his thumb against the side of his index finger.
"What did you tell them?"
"I didn't tell them much."
"Annie."
Her eyes returned to his.
There was no defiance in them, but there was something he found almost equally difficult to tolerate.
Patience.
"They asked whether I was leaving."
Kevin's hand stopped moving.
"Leaving tonight?"
"No."
The room seemed quieter.
Annie looked down briefly and straightened an already straight cuff.
"They wanted to know if I was going to leave the house."
Kevin glanced at his sons.
Oliver's eyelashes rested dark against his cheek.
"Why would they ask you that?"
Annie waited.
He disliked the silence because it made his question sound as foolish as it was.
Three nannies.
A housekeeper before Annie.
Their mother's nurse.
Relatives arriving after the funeral and disappearing back into airports, offices, marriages, and lives that continued normally.
Even Kevin had disappeared in smaller ways.
Behind his office door.
Into calls.
Into a glass of bourbon after the boys went to bed.
Into the downstairs guest room on nights when entering the bedroom he had once shared with Claire felt impossible.
His gaze moved upward before he meant it to.
The portrait hung above the dark wood paneling opposite the bed.
May you like
Claire had hated the painting.
She had called it Kevin's "oil-based midlife crisis" when he commissioned it for their tenth anniversary.
