The heavy doors clicked softly behind me as I stepped out into the sunlit yard. Bright afternoon light poured down, warm and unforgiving on the stone steps.
Pauline was coming up the stairs toward the entrance, dark glasses hiding her eyes, dressed all in black for grief. We met halfway. A half-embrace, a quick kiss on each cheek—the quiet, careful acknowledgment of two people who had once worked under the same roof and now stood on opposite sides of what that roof had become. She continued inside. I headed down the steps.
I found Mable around the side of the mansion, standing alone in a patch of direct sunlight. Her chocolate skin glowed under the harsh light, the same neat braids she'd worn the night she showed up at my hostel room in Hogsby. She spotted me and smiled—just briefly, the kind of small, instinctive smile you give a familiar face before the weight of the day crashes back in.
