Margot's Real Move
Margot did not choose a public place.
The message through Caleb had been brief and precise: Mrs. Margot Blackmere requests Mrs. Elara Blackmere's presence at the family estate at two in the afternoon. Elara had read it twice and recognised it immediately for what it was, not an invitation in any sense that word normally carried, but a summons dressed in the syntax of a request.
She went. Not out of obligation. She went because she had learned that the things you avoided had a way of getting heavier the longer you left them, and she did not intend to carry Margot Blackmere as extra weight any longer.
The estate was as she remembered. Old trees. The private road. The house that settled into its landscape rather than declaring itself against it, the way old mo
