Rosa had gone home at seven.
The estate was quiet in the specific way it was only quiet after everyone had left. A different quality from the early mornings. Fuller. The house settling into itself for the night. Sera had eaten alone in the kitchen, something simple Rosa had left covered on the stove, washed her own plate, stood by the kitchen window for a moment, and then moved.
She went to the small sitting room at the end of the east corridor.
She doesn't come here often. It had been her mother's room. Savio had kept it unchanged after she died when Sera was eleven. Same furniture, same lamp with the pale yellow shade, same two books on the lower shelf her mother had been reading and never finished. The room smelled of old wood and something faintly floral that had long since stopped
