LENA

I did not expect him to be in the kitchen.

I want to be specific about this. I had developed, in eleven weeks of living in Julian Blackwood's penthouse, a reliable internal map of his mornings. He was at his desk by seven, sometimes earlier. His coffee was already made when I came down. Mrs. Billy arrived at eight. The kitchen, in the window between six-thirty and seven, was mine, the specific and particular gift of thirty unobserved minutes in which I could be in a room without performing anything for anyone.

I had come to depend on those thirty minutes.

I came into the kitchen at six fifty-one...