JULIAN

I understood this with the specific and clear recognition of a man who understood cause and effect. She had named it tonight because the terrace had made the running visible in a way the previous instances had not, because one centimeter and a phone call and a man who reappeared at dinner as a perfect and managed professional version of himself was a sequence with a specific and readable logic, and Lena Carter read things with the particular and careful precision of a woman who wrote like she meant every word.

She had read it.

She had named it.

She had gone to bed.

You're running again.

You also...