However, George started paying attention in the way he hadn’t let himself pay attention before. He did not go through her things, nothing like that, but watched. He noted things.
She came home late on a Tuesday and said she’d had an errand to run after work. On Thursday she spent forty minutes in the car before coming inside, and when she did, her face had the composed look of someone who tried hard to be normal. She was sleeping badly. He could tell from the way she lay still too deliberately, the particular quality of silence that wasn’t rest.
Rex had taken to sleeping outside their bedroom door, which he hadn’t done before, and George would find them both there sometimes in the small hours when he got up — Zoe sitting with her back against the wall, the dog beside her, her hand on his back. She’d say she couldn’t sleep again, but that the dog’s presence was calming.