Elena came back inside after forty minutes in the car.

Marcus was still in the living room. He had not turned on more lights. He looked up when the door closed, but he did not speak first.

Elena set her keys on the console table with deliberate care. The bruises across her ribs ached from the way she had been sitting hunched in the driver’s seat. Between her legs the morning’s load had slowed to a faint, sticky reminder that now felt less like a claim and more like evidence she no longer knew what to do with.

“I’m going upstairs,” she said.

Marcus’s voice was even. “We weren’t finished.”...