“She wants to talk to you,” Amy said. “I told her I called you and she asked if she could.”
Cloe had been expecting this call back. She had been at her desk for two hours since hanging up with Marshall and she had answered emails and restructured a schedule and done all the ordinary things her job required while some part of her had been sitting with the image of a twenty-two-year-old woman closing a laptop quietly.
“Put her on,” Cloe said.
A pause. Movement. The sound of a phone being handed across.
Then a voice. Young. Clear. Careful in a way that was not performance but habit, the careful of someone who had learned not to expect too much from conversations that mattered.
“Hello,” Lily said.
“Hello Lily,” Cloe said.
A silence. Not uncomfortable. The kind that existed between two p
