Three days passed.
Quiet ones.
The kind of quiet that came after a storm had moved through and taken everything that needed taking and left the air clean and strange and full of something that hadn't been there before.
Richard was gone — not loudly, not dramatically. He had left the estate on the same day with two bags and the measured dignity of a man who understood that his position was no longer tenable but wasn't ready to say so out loud. Eleanor had watched him go from the upstairs window and said nothing and gone back to her roses.
That was that.
The legal complexity would unfold slowly over the coming months — James was coordinating with Ethan's solicitors, the envelope's contents were being authenticated, the case that had taken three years to build was now being formally asse
