My mother didn't speak on the drive back, she sat between me and Imogen in the back seat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed on the road ahead. I watched her from the side, watched the particular quality of her silence, and I realized it was not the silence of someone who had nothing to say, but the silence of someone who had too much, stacked too high, and was holding it by sheer force of will until she found a place safe enough to put it down.
We got back to the estate at half past seven. Marco went directly to the kitchen, and Elspeth, who had apparently not slept, appeared from the hallway and began producing eggs without being asked, with the specific efficiency of a woman who had learned that feeding people was the only useful response to catastrophe. Dorian went to
