They flew home in silence.
Not the comfortable silence of the mornings in the kitchen or the late nights in the sitting room. This was heavier. The kind that comes after something has been released into the world and cannot be taken back. The kind that sits between two people who have just done something irreversible and are each separately processing what it means.
Her father's door closing gently.
That sound had followed Aurora out of the house and into the car and onto the plane and it was still with her now, sitting somewhere behind her sternum where she kept the things that mattered too much to put down.
He had not come back out.
They had waited for forty minutes in that sitting room. Damian still. Aurora with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the window and her heart d
