She blinks once, confused. She has been wrestling with all of this for so long—years, if she's honest, not just the last few months since he arrived—that it's difficult to imagine how it must sound from the outside, to someone who doesn't know every stupid, painful detail. But she catches his meaning and immediately shakes her head, fingers uncurled from around the base of her wine glass to stretch toward him, forestalling.

"No, no, it's not like that. It's—" she flounders there, and says finally, with a rueful little laugh and another shake of her head, "It's much worse. If he were a problem like that I would know what to do."