Margaret was in her home office when they arrived, and Wren watched her face move through disbelief, calculation, and something that looked almost like relief, all in the space of a few seconds, when Isabella walked through the door behind Sebastian and Wren.
"You're alive," Margaret said, and for once there was nothing managed in her voice at all.
"No thanks to the conversation we had three months ago," Isabella said. Her voice was steadier than it had been in the car, the particular steadiness of a woman who had spent eleven weeks rehearsing exactly this moment. "I need you to know that I've told them everything, Margaret. All of it — what you said to me, what I found in the attic, what I believe about our family's history. There's no version of this where you get to manage the story a
