She had learned to read it from his face. He did not know she had learned this. She had not told him because telling him would change it, he would become self-conscious about what he showed, and she would lose the only window she had into something that was entirely his.
The catalogue was his. She had never seen it, though she knew it existed somewhere, a notebook or a file. What she had was her own catalogue: the way he held his hands before playing when the colors were present versus when he was checking for something he was not sure was still there. The angle of his head. The length of the pause before the second note.
She was in the doorway with coffee she had not given him. She had been doing this more in the past few months, standing at the threshold with something to hand him, not handing it, watching the length of the pause. She knew this was a strange thing to be doing. She was doing it anyway.
He played the low keys. She watched his hands, the angle of his head. The pause before the second note was short. She had catalogued this: the short pause was the pause of someone who found what they were looking for. The long pause was the other kind.
She should ask. She had been telling herself she should ask for eight months. She did not ask because she was not sure how to ask, not "are the colors fading?" but the question under that question, the one about what it meant to him that they were fading, and whether there was anything she was allowed to do about it. She was not sure she was ready for that answer, or if he was. She wanted to ask. She didn't ask. He played it again.