"I'm not going to knock twice."
I pulled the door open. Vivienne stood in the corridor with a white envelope in her hand, dressed already, composed already, the kind of woman who was never caught between states.
She looked at me for exactly one second. Then she held the envelope out.
I took it.
She turned and walked back down the corridor without a word, her footsteps measured, fading.
I looked down at the envelope in my hand.
My name in Richard's handwriting. The writing looked meticulous, slightly uneven, the handwriting of a man whose hands had been giving him trouble toward the end, compensating with slowness.
I closed the door.
I did not open it immediately. I stood with it in both hands, feeling the weight of it, which was light in the physical sense, heavier in every other s
