She sat with the problem for a moment. The kitchen continued its warm, unhurried presence around her.
Outside, the morning was slowly transitioning into daytime.
"He won't—" Elizabeth started. "Rex... He isn't going to—"
"Make it complicated?" Marceline offered.
"I was going to say, 'make unreasonable demands,'" Elizabeth said. "But that also."
"He won't," Mara said, with the certainty of someone who had already navigated that specific territory. "He's excellent at understanding what a thing is and what it isn't."
"He doesn't try to make it into something different than what it is."
Elizabeth thought about the canyon. About what things were and what they weren't and about a man who had been entirely clear-eyed about both without making it into a production.
"Right," she said.
She sat for another moment.
"It would be extremely premature to be concerned," she said, in a tone of someone making a policy statement for her own benefit.
"Extremely," Marceline agreed.
