The penthouse had been quiet for exactly three days.
Three days of peace. Three days of Sophie's normal chaos and Kevin's spreadsheets and Lucas's pink ears. Three days without family interrogations or wrong names or imaginary spoons. I had started to believe that maybe, just maybe, the universe was done throwing relatives at me.
I was wrong.
Lucas received the call during our morning coffee. His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. And his face, his carefully controlled and perpetually neutral face, showed genuine surprise.
"Mother," he said, answering. "Is everything alright?"
Mother. Lucas had a mother. I knew this intellectually. He had mentioned her once, briefly, when Elaine asked about his family. A retired schoolteacher. Widowed. Living somewhere outside the city. But knowing something intellectually and being confronted with its immediate reality were two very different things.
