The next letter arrived. He saw that she checked the post before he did that morning, flipped through it quickly, and took one envelope straight to her bag without opening it at the table as she usually did.
He noticed. He said nothing. He was becoming skilled, in those weeks, at noticing things and saying nothing, storing them in a part of his mind he kept carefully separate from the part that had to get through the day.
What he did register, and couldn’t account for was Rex. After Zoe came in from work that evening, the dog had been unusually attentive, pressing close to her side, following her from room to room with a focus that felt less like affection and more like vigilance. At one point, sitting on the kitchen floor after dinner, Zoe had put both arms around Rex’s neck and pressed her face into his fur, and Rex had simply stood there and let her, solid and still. George had watched from the doorway and felt, with some force, that he was on the outside of something he didn’t have the full shape of yet.