Cora is not overly sensitive, so it shocks her husband to find her sobbing at her dressing table.
"It's broken!" She wails into his chest, and for a heart-stopping second he fears for the baby. But instead she holds up a comb, a gift from her mother, snapped in half.
He buries a smile as he gathers his shuddering wife into his arms. His mother warned him of this, in her oblique way. His wife is far from home, far from her mother.
And pregnant.
She cries herself to sleep in his arms. Sometimes he forgets she is so young.