The picture assembled itself slowly in Jenny's mind. She turned it. She examined it from multiple angles.
'Until I decide otherwise.'
'It keeps her occupied.'
She exhaled through her nose.
Somewhere in the lower regions of the anger she had been carrying for a month — the anger at Jake, at circumstance, at the sequence of events that had landed Thalia in a position Jenny had privately imagined for herself — something shifted. Rearranged. Reformed itself into something slightly more bearable.
He was managing her. Thalia. Keeping her busy and titled and positioned while he—
'While he called Jenny.'
"Oh," Jenny said. And then, because the word felt too small to carry what it was supposed to carry, she said it again, differently. "Oh. I see."
'"Is there something wrong with that?"'
"No." She smoothed a hand over her hair, a reflex. "No, I just — why did you call?"
