It might be time, eventually, to roll over and carry on this conversation normally and in a way where he can see her face; but for now, this is fine. This works. And Stephen thinks for a moment, to verify when he suspects it happened, but he doesn’t have to think for very long. The answer’s right in front of him and has been all along.

“Right from the start,” he says. “When I left Nebraska as soon as I could at eighteen, and moved to New York for pre-med. For school. I even—”

this part is going to sound so laughable, the fucking meticulous lengths he’d gone to, when it’s not like he was hiding a scandalous elfblooded history or anything, it wasn’t anything that would have disastrous social consequences for him, and yet, and yet,

“I even changed my accent. Practiced it until I could fit in. Erased all traces of my past. Until hardly anyone could guess I’d come from the country and with shit on my boots.”