Chapter 11
Lena's POV
The car came first.
The crunch of gravel, an engine that cut off, and then the sudden stillness that follows an unannounced arrival. I was in the library, really reading this time, when I heard the sounds from down below. I didn't think anything of them – cars came and went with a frequency I was still trying to map.
And then I heard her voice.
It came through the floor, through the walls, like it always did. Sophia always seemed to carry, not in the sense that she was loud – that she wasn’t – but in the way her words were all arranged before she spoke them, like a carefully thought-out melody.
I remained in the library.
Fifteen minutes later. Twenty. I turned pages without really seeing words, listening to the faint sounds from below.
Then the door to the li
