Calla POV
The Alderton house wakes up on a schedule.
I learn this at six-fifteen when the housekeeper, a quiet woman named Gloria, moves through the hallway outside our bedroom door with a precision that tells me she has done this every morning for years. Coffee starts at six-thirty. Breakfast is served at seven. The house runs like a production, and this morning is opening night, and I am the only cast member who doesn't know her lines.
Rhys is already gone when I wake up — a note on his side of the bed, three words in clean blocky handwriting: Board call. Seven. Nothing else. I hold the note for a moment and think about his hand on my face in the dark, and I put the note down and get up.
First priority: the layout.
I move through the house slowly, with a coffee cup as cover, the way
