Does it need a defense?

The question is given room to sit, while Ellis works his way to an answer. In all their conversation, all the weightier things passed back and forth between them, Ellis had not spent time imagining what sort of home Tony had made for himself. Maybe the barest consideration had given him a backdrop familiar to Ellis, even with the knowledge that it was unlikely to have been so.

"I hadn't thought of it," is honest. It is probably predictable. "I wouldn't have known to imagine something like this even if I had."

Wysteria maybe. Or maybe she was just better at adapting than Ellis.