No, he doesn't imagine that went well. His head tips back, eye languid over shoulder, and from that angle it's easy to imagine: A time when wry looks might have cast some rakish charm.

But everyone grows up.

"I trust you've had it before." Birth changes the body, and while he knows little of the husband, he knows enough to guess at control. "Some will leap to it, keen to remind you how beautiful you are,"

(She is that.)

"Despite it all." A mark of power, however thoughtlessly exchanged, and their work doesn't draw the thoughtless. They'll use it. Call it vanity, or safety — "I don't think it a failing to wish to recognize oneself."

Only an impossibility. There's scant alike between age and the prospect before her, Isaac doesn't scar or stand a wound. Can't grow his teeth back either, or will hair and wrinkle to bend; returns time and again to the shape of a different man.

So she has fancied herself above it. She is not the woman who died so long ago. She's this one, and this one may cop to an affection of her limbs.