The drive back from the Conway estate took forty minutes. The light had shifted while they were inside — still afternoon, but the gold had deepened, the shadows stretching longer across the lawns as the car pulled through the gates.
Home.
Arianne stepped out. Franz followed. Gio was already heading for the door, his jacket over his arm, the long day settling into his shoulders.
The house was quiet. The twins were upstairs in their room, playing. Aunt Estella was somewhere in the back, the kitchen or the garden. The familiar quiet of a house that was lived in, not performed.
Arianne stopped in the hallway. Her hand on the banister.
"I have work."
Franz looked at her. "Now?"
"It piled up. I was gone all day."
She wasn't lying. There was always work. But her voice had that particular evenness he'd learned to read — the tone she used when she was withdrawing not because something was wrong but because something had been too much and she needed to process it alone.
