The study was empty now.
The board stayed on the wall. Arianne hadn't moved to take anything down. The lines she'd drawn, the names she'd written, the connections she'd spent the night laying out—they weren't going anywhere. They would be there in the morning. They would be there until she finished what she'd started.
She stood at the window. The garden beyond was dark. The hedges she'd watched trim last weekend were just shapes now, no edges, no definition. Her reflection sat faint in the glass. She wasn't looking at it.
Behind her, Franz was putting things away. Not the board. That stayed. But the glasses from the bar cart. The jacket he'd left over the chair. The scattered papers they'd pulled from Gilbert's files. Small movements. The kind that said the night was over, even if nothing in her felt finished.
She heard him pause. Then his voice.
"You've been quiet since they left."
She didn't turn. "I'm thinking."
"About the twins."
She turned then.
