Vivienne's POV
She came to my apartment.
Not her office this time. My apartment. She arrived at eight in the evening with the full file in a folder and her laptop and the specific expression she wore when she had been thinking hard about something for several hours and had arrived at the point where the thinking needed to become a conversation.
I had made coffee.
We sat at my dining table.
The table where Charles had lit candles on my birthday. Where we had eaten dinners and talked through evenings and built the ordinary texture of two people becoming part of each other's daily life.
I sat on one side.
Ella sat on the other.
She put the folder on the table between us and opened her laptop beside it.
She looked at me.
"Before I start," she said. "I need to say something."
"Say it
