The sound of the shower ran for twenty minutes, but it was another twenty five after that before Cassidy emerged from her room. I pretended to be too engrossed in the tv show I was watching to notice. I didn't want her to feel nervous around me, or appear too interested in where she had been all day. But I was surprised and apprehensive when she quietly began preparing some food in the kitchen without saying a single word to me. She didn't even say hello, or ask how I was doing.

Some time later the noises in the kitchen stopped and Cassidy quietly came to sit with me in the living room. When I looked over at her, she was absently stirring a steaming bowl of food with a pained expression on her face.