"You do deserve better." I offer Mab a small smile, and squeeze her hand. "I can't imagine that it's a comfortable feeling, coming home every night - or morning - with the memories of what you've been doing. Trying is all that I'd ask. A feeling like the one you have…it can't be changed all at once."

I lean back as Mab pulls away - but it isn't a sharp, closed-off sort of pulling away, just the ordinary leaning back so that we can both get on with our tea. Relief is seeping back into me, taking the place of the tension - tension that has been there for much longer than I have realized, and that I only feel in its departure.

"We're not the first who have noticed," I admit quietly. "Only the first who have spoken up to you. Unless Jack has said something?" I think he must have. If I know him at all, he would have shown his unhappiness in some way, even if he did not come out and talk to Mab as we have done. "And…forgive me, please, for not having spoken up sooner. You deserve better than our silence, too. Our friendship does."