REBECCA’S POV
She stayed for two hours.
I had not expected that. When I opened the door and saw her standing on the doorstep I had anticipated something shorter, a specific question delivered with the efficiency of a woman who had decided to come here and get the answer and leave. Rose Benson had always struck me as someone who moved through the world with economy. She did not linger. She did not sprawl into spaces that weren’t specifically hers.
But she stayed for two hours, and in those two hours the conversation moved through several distinct phases the way long conversations do when both people have been carrying something for a long time and have finally found a room where it can be set down and examined.
The first phase was careful. She had arrived with the specific guard of a w
