“Are you sure you don’t miss the noise? The phones ringing, the board members shouting, the world demanding to know where the great Lucian Aldridge has disappeared to?”

Celeste leaned against the mahogany doorframe of the library, watching Lucian. The afternoon sun was beginning its slow descent, spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows and catching the dust motes that danced in the quiet air. He wasn’t hunched over a laptop or barking orders into a speakerphone, and for the first time in months, he wasn’t wearing his usual armor. No three-piece suit, no silk tie, no cufflinks that cost more than a year of her brother’s tuition. He was wearing a...