“In another room.”
She left. Dani looked at the page.
“My turn,” she said.
I should have redirected to preferences.
Instead, I asked, “What do you need when you are upset?”
“A joke.”
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“Food.”
“No.”
“Space.”
“Sometimes.”
The pattern was becoming familiar.
“You need to know you can stop talking and I will not make you turn the silence into a joke,” I said.
Dani’s smile disappeared. I knew from the way she got louder when frightened and quiet only after exhaustion made performance impossible. Her thigh-tapping stopped.
“Okay,” she said. No joke followed.
I wrote the answer beneath hers. For several minutes, neither of us returned to the quiz.
The event took place in Studio A. Blake had arranged two rows of chairs facing a small stage. Each couple sat back-to-back with dry-erase boards and markers. The audience occupied folding chairs along the walls. Rose sat beside Tessa in the front row. Gloria had work. Lola sent a video message.
“Good luck, Aunt Dani and Amy. Don’t lie because lying makes quizzes harder.”
Dani played the message twice before facing me.
“She has become hostile.”
“She is accurate.”
We took our seats. Dani wore a fitted black shirt and dark green trousers. I wore the burgundy sweater from dinner because Dani had said the color made my eyes look warmer. This was not a recognized quality of brown eyes. I wore it anyway. Blake stood at the center of the stage with a stack of cards.
“Tonight’s challenge is simple,” they said. “We are testing how well each couple truly knows one another.”
A screen behind them displayed:
PREFERENCES. HABITS. HISTORY. HEART.
The final category concerned me. The audience applauded. Blake continued.
“Each correct match earns one point. The final five questions are worth two points each because emotional knowledge should be rewarded more aggressively.”
“That is an arbitrary scoring decision,” I said.
Dani leaned toward me.
