I found Lucien in the kitchen.
He was standing at the counter with coffee and his phone, already dressed, already in the professional register he carried like a second skin, and he looked up when I came in and read my face the way he always read it, fast and complete, and put the phone down.
"Victor," he said.
"Victor," I confirmed. I set both mugs in the sink. I told him everything, the morning walk, the questions that were tests, the horses, the moment when I named what he was doing and the specific quality of the silence that followed. I told it in sequence and without editorialising and when I finished I looked at him and waited.
Lucien was quiet for a long moment.
"He told you about the horses," he said. His voice was even. Careful in the way it got careful when something had rea
