Eleanor's message sat there in the dark of Noah's phone screen for exactly as long as it took him to turn the device face-down and change the subject, and I let him, because I'd learned enough in the last few hours to know when pushing would get me nowhere.
The rest of that week moved fast in the particular way weeks do when you're bracing for something and it keeps not arriving. Patricia Alvarez didn't run her story. Eleanor's foundation issued its quiet correction, one paragraph, dignified and devastating in its restraint, and the morning-show narrative around Ava lost its shine almost overnight. My mother didn't call again. Ryan didn't either. It felt less like peace and more like the particular silence right before a held breath gets let go.
And then Friday arrived, and with it, the
