They left at midnight and no one said goodbye because there was no one to say it to who would have understood what they were saying goodbye to.
They went out through the gap between the grain store and the old stone fence. Rhea had found it on the first day and had said nothing about it, just filed it the way she filed exits, which was quietly and in case of exactly this.
Through the baker's yard, past the sleeping dog that Rhea had apparently made friends with on one of her walks because it did not make a sound, out through the hedge at the property's east edge.
Eleven minutes from the rented rooms to the village boundary.
No lamps. The moon was just starting its new cycle, thin and barely there, the kind of moon that gave you dark rather than light. Rhea had planned for this. She walked the route as though the dark didn't affect her, which was the result of having walked it twice in daylight and once in the early evening and knowing every stone and root before they arrived.
