Faced with that relentless string of questions from Ambrose Ward, Franklin Foster opened his mouth, closed it again, and discovered, to his considerable horror, that no sound at all was willing to come out. His cheeks burned with a hot, prickling shame, the kind of heat that crept up from the collar and lodged itself somewhere behind the ears, while in his chest there sat a weight that felt heavier with every passing second.
Had it really only been failure of oversight? Had he genuinely been kept in the dark?
No. The answer arrived before he had finished framing the question, and it arrived with all the cruel honesty of a mirror held an inch from one's face.
He had heard things. Whispers in corridors, half-sentences trailed off over cups of tea, the small, telling silences that fell whe
