“Hard work for me?” Benevenuta lifts her hands, kisses them-- “Or,” turning them over, her thumbs against Irene's wrists, “for you?”

...and that - that right there - was her confession. The knowing underneath that wry, intimate inquiry; the understanding. The sense-memory in the words of a thousand times she didn't know how to tell the truth not because the truth was such a terrible thing but because she wasn't in the habit, because her instincts disagreed with what she was trying to make herself do, because she was thinking damage control before she'd made the mess.