REBECCA’S POV
Olivia called at eleven in the morning, which was itself unusual. Olivia did not call before noon unless something had moved.
“I need you to sit down,” she said.
I was already sitting at the desk in the study, Marcus’s latest notes open in front of me. I did not tell her that. I simply said, “I’m sitting.”
“Edmund hired a private investigator.” She said it the way she said everything that mattered, without softening it first, without building toward it through smaller sentences.
“Six weeks ago.”
I set my pen down on the desk. I did not pick it back up.
“Six weeks,” I repeated.
“Six weeks,” she said. “Not since the party. Before it. Before the toast, before any of it.”
I did the arithmetic without meaning to, the way I had trained myself to do it these past months,
