Mira was quiet for most of the drive back.
Not the heavy quiet of distress — Lena had learned, in nine days, to distinguish Mira's silences, the way you learned to read weather. This was the quiet of someone holding something carefully, the way you'd carry water in cupped hands across a long distance, attention given entirely to not spilling.
It was Remy who finally spoke, somewhere on the moor road, the heather grey-gold in the afternoon light.
"You don't have to say anything," he said. Quietly. To Mira, but not only to her — Lena felt it land in the car the way true things did, addressed to one person and received by everyone.
"I know," Mira said.
She looked out the window.
"My room," she said, after a while, "was exactly as I left it. The book I'd been reading was still on the nig
