Lena

I found it the way you found most bad things.

By accident. On an ordinary morning. When I wasn't prepared.

It was just past eight o'clock and I was at the kitchen table with tea and the notes from Thursday's gala walkthrough, going through my list of follow-up items for Diana. The centerpiece confirmation. The lighting cue sheet. A question I'd forgotten to ask about parking logistics for the accessibility vehicles. Normal things. Productive things. The kind of quiet Tuesday morning work that had started to feel, cautiously and carefully, like a life I was building rather than a sentence I was serving.

Mrs. Billy was making something with...