John's room held the particular quiet of a place and had been awake for hours without moving much.
The window facing the compound's front yard showed the pre-dawn sky in its last deep gray—the shapes of the yard's outer wall and the rooftop beyond it just beginning to define themselves against the lightening air.
A low table sat between two chairs near the window, a cold cup on its surface that had been set down and forgotten sometime in the middle of the night. The room was organized in the same way John Osborn organized everything—not for appearance, but for function. Nothing in it that was not supposed to be there. Nothing is missing that should have been.
John took one chair. Robert took the other.
Robert greeted his father before starting the conversation.
