***Present day***
Julian.
The study door swings all the way open under my hand, and both of them go still.
My mother pouring wine into her glass, my father mid-sentence, the kind of stillness that doesn't belong to an ordinary conversation about caterers or seating charts.
I didn't catch all of it. Fragments, mostly, I couldn't get everything they were talking about — listing... buyer... She stopped asking questions.
My mother's voice, flat and administrative, the tone she uses for anything she doesn't want to sound as important as it is.
I know when she sounds like that, like she's the one in authority.
My father, quieter, saying something I don't fully understand about ‘James’?
None of it makes sense fast enough to hold onto. Them looking as shocked as this, gives me all I need
