He heard himself say it.
He heard the specific, mortal, completely sincere quality of the question — the question he had been asking her for eleven years in the mornings when she came to bed late, the same question, the same voice, the same intent underneath it.
She looked at him.
Her jaw shifted slightly. The Chief's jaw — the specific, micro-movement of a woman who was processing something she had not decided to discuss yet.
"Yes," she said.
She looked at the window.
"The cultivator helped me last night," she said.
The words arrived.
He received them.
The specific, flat, present, completely-honest-in-their-own-way words of his wife describing the night in the terminology she had selected, which was 'helped', which was a word that contained a great deal more than its syllables accounted for.
"The advancement—" She gestured slightly, the gesture indicating the cultivation light. "The dual cultivation—"
"I know what dual cultivation is," he said.
Quiet.
She looked at him.
