ROSE’S POV
He called me at ten and said it was handled.
I knew it wasn’t. I knew from the specific pause before he said it, that half-second of calculation that Edmund believed was invisible but that I had been reading for three months, I had catalogued and mapped and learned the way you learn any language you need to survive in.
Edmund’s pauses meant more than his words most of the time. The words were always correct. Polished and measured and placed with the precision of a man who had spent two decades saying exactly what needed to be said in exactly the order it needed to be said. The pauses were where the truth lived.
The pause before handled had lasted approximately four seconds.
I set down my wine after we hung up and sat with it.
Not with panic. I was not a woman who panicke
