James had known, yeah, of course he had, the day was coming—felt it in his bones before Charles ever set foot here. It was in the weight of that damned letter, in the long nights where silence wasn’t silence at all but something pressing against the glass like a hand, like breath. Knowing is one thing, though, easy in the abstract, but standing inside it? That’s a different kind of death. And when Sunday landed—no, crashed down—the whole world seemed tuned for rupture. The sky is not blue, not storm, just this flat lid of gray, heavy, watching, like the air had been warned too.
He couldn’t eat, not a mouthful. Coffee sat cold on the table. He walked—no, drifted—through the house, one room to the next, like some animal locked in the wrong cage. Couldn’t sit, couldn’t rest. Penelope hovered
