The sitting room of Ashford Manor held four people and a silence that was doing its own thing entirely.
I looked at Marcus.
Marcus was looking at the photograph.
The photograph was looking back at nobody because it was a photograph and had no opinions, which was more than I could say for the rest of us.
"Your grandmother," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"Her name is on the back of this photograph," I said. "Which was taken in the garden of this house."
"Yes," he said.
"Standing with my grandmother," I said. "And Damien's grandmother."
"Yes," he said.
He was still holding his coffee cup from earlier, which had gone completely cold, which he had not noticed, which told me more about the state of Marcus Vale in this specific moment than anything he was currently saying, because Marcus was
