We had the conversation in the records room, which was where we had most of our real conversations, the ones that were not about the household's operational requirements but about the other things, the things that accumulated over time between two people who had been in the same difficult situation together for long enough that the situation had become the foundation of something else.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. The records room had its usual quality at that hour, warm from the small fireplace in the corner, quiet from the fact that the junior stewards had finished their afternoon work and gone, orderly in the particular way of a room whose occupant valued order not as an aesthetic preference but as a functional necessity.
Eli was at his desk. I was in the chair across from it, which was not where I usually sat in this room. Sitting down meant something different. He registered the difference without comment and set down his pen.
"I want to thank you," I said.
