The library was the quietest room in the house, which was why she had suggested it, and Michael had agreed with the easy accommodation of someone who had stopped questioning why she preferred certain things and had started simply preferring them alongside her.
He was in the armchair nearest the window with a file open across his knee that he was not reading anymore, and she was on the window seat with a book she had not opened, and the afternoon had settled into the particular comfort of two people who had grown used to sharing silence. It was the kind of atmosphere Michael seemed to expand into, relaxed in a way she had noticed he wasn't in rooms where other people were present, where he wore his composure like a coat. Here he had put the coat down.
That was what she had been waiting for.
