The lamp was on low, and the room was quiet.
Franz's bag sat half-packed near the closet, its mouth open but not yet full. He'd been putting off the task all evening, finding reasons to linger in the sitting room with the twins, to help Estella with the dishes, to review his script one more time even though he'd already memorized it. The bag was a deadline. Once it was packed, the leaving became real.
Arianne sat on his bed with her back against the headboard, her legs stretched out before her. She was wearing her nightdress, the pale gray one he'd seen a hundred times, and a few documents were spread across her lap—reports from Rochefort Group that Gio had flagged for her review. She'd been staring at the same page for ten minutes without reading a word.
