At four o’clock Victoria closed the book and looked at both of them from the living room doorway.

“I want dinner at the table tonight,” she said. “All three of us. Ordinary food. Ordinary chairs. No one eating in the study or the kitchen island or standing at the counter. We are going to sit in the same room and share a meal inside the full shape of what this house has become. That is the next piece.”

The silence that followed was immediate and complete.

Elena felt the wire of tension pull to its absolute limit. The thick residual claim inside her. The aching lower marks. The complete submission....