I went to the library.
Not for the books, for the quiet. The particular quality of the room at three PM, the afternoon light crossing the floor in the way I'd come to know over forty days of Sunday mornings and late nights and ordinary evenings that had become the structure of something I hadn't planned for.
I sat in my chair.
I looked at my phone.
Called Noah.
He answered on the second ring, which meant he'd been expecting it. Noah had always had the ability to anticipate and call the intelligence professional's version of an instinct that had been there since childhood, before it became a skill.
"I heard," he said, before I could speak. "The guilty plea."
"Yes."
"How are you actually doing?"
I thought about it honestly, which was something I could do with Noah in a way I could
