Helena received the news on a Thursday.
Not by text — Leonardo had been clear about that, in the way he was clear about things that concerned his mother: she found out things that mattered either from him directly or not at all. He called the previous evening to say he was coming and that he had something to tell her, which was how Helena also knew before he arrived that it was significant, because Leonardo had been calling with things-to-tell-her since his father died, and she'd learned to calibrate the approach to the weight of what was coming.
Camila had offered to go with him. He'd said he needed to do this alone first. Not because it was complicated — he'd said this carefully — but because it was Helena and Helena and he had a specific language between them and some conversations ne
