"Bruce," she said eventually.
"Mm."
A small pause, in which he could feel her choosing the words with the care she gave to things that mattered. "Today was..." She stopped. Started again, differently. "I didn't expect today to feel the way it did."
Bruce kept his eyes on the road. "How did you expect it to feel?"
"Bigger," she said. "Heavier. My father, the planning, all of it." A quiet exhale. "I thought I'd spend the whole day managing it. And instead it just..." She made a small gesture with one hand, a movement that described something settling rather than something resolving. "It felt like an ordinary day. A good one."
Bruce was quiet for a moment. Then: "Is that bad?"
Sophie turned to look at him fully. The dashboard light caught the side of her face, the particular quality of her expression, which was something open and unhurried that she didn't produce for most people and had stopped trying to conceal from him.
"No," she said. "That's what made it good."
