Richard
My phone buzzes.
“Hello, James. How is she now?”
“Much better. A good sleep has worked wonders. Would you and Beth like to come up when it’s convenient. She wants to talk to all of us together.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I sit together with Elizabeth, who keeps her fingers laced with mine. James is relaxed, a smile playing around his eyes as he sits by Charlotte.
Michael is otherwise. For a man who is normally warm and relaxed, he seems distant, almost disconnected. On the several occasions when I have seen him before with Charlotte in similar situations, he has been, as James phrased it, her anchor. Now he barely looks at her, and there’s a set to his jaw that I’ve not seen before.
Beth notices it too, eye-pointing me across to him. I quell her with a warning glanc
