Ezra didn't sleep that night, and by morning he'd arrived at a conclusion he clearly dreaded voicing and clearly intended to voice anyway, because some things, he'd learned the hard way, only got worse with delay. He'd spent most of the dark hours turning the problem over the way he used to turn over a difficult job, searching for an angle that didn't require accepting a loss as the cost of doing business — except this time the loss wasn't a fee forfeited or a contact burned. It was a person, slowly disappearing in increments too small to stop and too large to ignore.

"I think we should slow down,"...