The last guests to leave a good dinner are always the ones who enjoyed it most, and the Hendersons stood in the front hall for a further twenty minutes proving it — coats half on, one story leading to another, Marion holding a scarf she had already found twice.
He walked them the last few feet himself, one hand light on the doorframe, and said the things a host says: safe home, thank you for the wine, we should do this again before the year's out. None of it was a lie. All of it was also, very precisely, a delay he had learned to perform without looking like he minded it.
Across the emptying room she stacked the good plates with a care they didn't strictly need, because a task kept her hands from doing anything that might read, to two people still buttoning their coats, as impatience.
"Drive safe," she called, not turning around, and heard him laugh at something David had said — low, easy, the laugh he kept for guests. Hers was a different sound entirely, and she was the only one in the house who would hear it tonight.
The door held open a full minute past the goodbyes, admitting the cold, admitting one last remark about the weather. She counted plates instead of seconds. It did not help.
"We really are so glad you—" and then, at last, footsteps on the walk, headlights swinging out of the drive, and his hand finding the edge of the door.
He didn't close it right away. He stood there with it half shut, looking back across the wrecked, wonderful table at the eight settings and the one place still left to clear, and something in his face let the whole evening's performance drop at once.
Neither of them moved yet. The latch hadn't caught. She set the last plate down without hearing it land, and the house held its breath along with both of them, waiting on that one small, decisive sound.