Lena's POV
Mara sat at the kitchen table.
Not the composed, capable woman who ran this house with quiet authority. Something smaller. The particular diminishment of a person who has been found out — not caught, exactly, but seen. The distinction mattered.
I put the kettle on.
Old habit. Mara's habit, actually — one I'd absorbed from months of watching her use the act of making tea as a way of giving difficult conversations a container. Something to do with your hands while the hard things found their shape.
I made two cups and sat across from her.
She wrapped her hands around the cup. Didn't speak.
"How long?" I said.
She looked at the table. "He made contact in July," she said. "Four months ago."
"Through who?"
"Someone at the market," she said. "A face I didn't know. He just —
