“I’m not asking you to stop being his father.”

“Yesterday, he asked whether I would put his picture away.”

Her face crumpled.

“I know.”

“For months, he’s been watching the house to find out whether people disappear one frame at a time.”

Felicity looked down.

The silence lasted long enough that Elias thought she might finally speak about Arthur without defending herself.

Instead, she said, “You’re making a permanent decision over one dinner.”

“No,” he answered. “The dinner showed me the decision I’d been avoiding.”

He ended the engagement.

He did not threaten her.

He did not use the parts of his reputation that usually made people comply.

They arranged for her belongings to be collected when Arthur was at school.

She could have someone with her.

She could send instructions through his assistant about practical matters.

But she would not return to living in the house.

At the door, she removed the ring.

For a moment, he thought she might throw it.

Instead, she placed it beside the new frame.

“Was any of it real?”

He looked at the photograph from the terrace.

“Yes,” he said. “That doesn’t make this right.”

After she left, he remained in the room until he was certain he could go to his son without asking the boy to comfort him.

Arthur did not celebrate the broken engagement.

That surprised some of the adults.

It did not surprise Clara.

When Elias told him Felicity would live somewhere else, Arthur asked whether she was lonely.

“I don’t know,” Elias said.

“Does she have her sister?”

“Yes.”

His son nodded.

Then he asked whether he had made the wedding stop.

Elias sat beside him.

“No.”

“But it happened after I said.”

“What you said helped me understand something. The decision about getting married was mine.”

Arthur traced the edge of the cushion.

“Could I have said it differently?”

“You didn’t need to find a sentence that kept everybody happy.”

“Were you happy before?”

The question hurt because the answer was complicated.

“Sometimes.”

Arthur looked up.

“Then I made you less happy.”

Elias moved closer, stopping when their shoulders touched.

“You told me you were frightened. I needed to know. Looking after you isn’t something you owe me happiness for.”

His son leaned against him.

After a while, he said, “She helped me build the bridge.”

“I remember.”