The letter came nine days later.
Not an email. An actual letter — heavy envelope, the school's name embossed on the front, the kind of correspondence that understood its own weight and dressed accordingly.
Rosa brought it up at eight in the morning without comment and set it beside Elena's coffee cup and left the room with the particular efficiency of someone who had decided the moment required privacy.
Elena looked at it.
Valentino looked at it.
Then he looked at her.
She picked it up.
Her hands were steady. She had spent nine days being steady about this — had made a deliberate decision not to want it too loudly in case the wanting made the not getting worse. She had applied and sent it and put it in a place she didn't visit too often and got on with the building and the drafting
