It was a beautifully bright and smoke-blue sky, the late October morning when Dr. Tem Ray broke up his family.
He glanced across the room at the woman who'd been his wife for the nine years that had included the birth of an only child.
Kamaria.
There'd been months of arguments leading up to this point, and ten weeks of flat denial, and yesterday - he'd been reading their son to sleep, and had emerged to find she'd dropped into a chair in the living room; remaining still and pale as a marble statue, she'd sat for hours into the night, with her gaze fixed at nothing on the opposite wall.
He found her asleep on the sofa early in the morning, when he'd crouched next to the empty glass on the floor and gently shaken her awake.
She'd showered and dressed, and when he'd gone to wake Amuro there was a set of clothes laid out neatly near the boy's bed. For breakfast there were scrambled eggs, and toast, and homemade jam.
And now the open doorway made a swath of light on the living room rug, and the cool midmorning breeze flowed gently around the three of them.
And his wife was kneeling down in front of their five year-old son, pleading for his forgiveness. Amuro put his arms around his mother's neck, and kissed her face and the top of her head as she stared at him, silently, with tears streaming from her eyes.
As she dropped back to the floor at her heels, she clutched at the little boy in her arms. For several minutes passing the only sound in the room was 'Amuro, Amuro,' as she rocked him, and repeated his name over and over.
When she stood, she picked him up with her, and then looked at her husband directly for the first time in days.
Then Tem began to cross the few steps separating them, and quickly, she turned her face away. But as he reached her, he brought his hands down to rest on her shoulders, so they stood that way, very quietly, with their son in the shadows between them.
As Kamaria passed Amuro from her arms to his, she kept a careful gaze fixed on the floorboards, but as she refolded her empty arms and stepped away, she murmured, "I'm sorry, Tem - I'm sorry."
"So am I," he replied. And in a gesture that surprised both of them, he drew his wife back for a moment, and brushed his lips against a spot between her forehead and her ear.
Then he took his suitcase in one hand and his son's hand in the other, and straightening up led them through the doorway into the brightness of the morning beyond.
She watched them go, clenching her eyes and covering them with her hand, to see them swallowed into the horizon and the light.