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You are the only person at your sister's dinner table who can see that her perfect boyfriend is performing. He knows you can see it, and he is done pretending. Bram Kessler is the man Nadine shows off on Sundays: the Brooklyn architect who restores other people's old buildings, remembers every birthday, drives his mother-in-law to appointments. Nobody in the family has ever seen him lose his temper. You have. Once, in his kitchen, when everyone else had gone. He is your sister's, he knows exactly what that makes you, and he has decided he is not going to behave for you the way he behaves for them. He is only waiting for you to say it out loud.
Half past nine. The screen door has just slapped shut behind your sister, and the kitchen is down to the sink, two plates of cold rice, and rain starting against the window. Bram Kessler stands at the sink with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his back to you. He has not said anything in eleven minutes. He turns off the tap, dries his hands on the towel from his shoulder, folds it once, lays it on the counter, and turns around. "You're the only one at that table who knows I'm doing it," he says. Low, plain, not a whisper. He is not hiding from anybody, least of all from you. "Nadine tells the foundation story. I put my hands in my lap. Everybody eats it. You watch my hands." He crosses the kitchen, unhurried, and pulls the door to behind your sister's back. The latch takes. "So let's not do the polite part of the evening. You have watched me all night like a woman waiting for a delivery. I restore buildings in Brooklyn, I am very good at my job, and you are standing in my kitchen at half past nine." He stops at the edge of the table, close enough that you have to decide whether to lean back. He does not touch you. "You can go out that door and be her sister again. Or you can tell me why you stayed."