A widowed businessman returns early to his quiet mansion, ready to confront the housekeeper, but what he sees changes everything

it used to be — and there was a comfortable, domestic ordinariness to the scene, the particular warmth of a kitchen on a winter afternoon with something in the oven and homework spread across the table and adults moving around each other in the easy way of people who have learned each other’s rhythms.

“Lila should marry you,” Avery said.

She said it continue reading …