"I have everything under control," Julian said.
Madam Vale looked at the television. At Amara's face, frozen in a still frame beneath a headline that was doing its best to narrate a story it did not understand.
"She is extraordinary," his mother said. It was not a question and not quite a statement...something between them.
"Yes," Julian said. Simply. "She is."
Another pause.
"Come for breakfast when this is done," Madam Vale said. "Both of you. And bring my grandchildren."
"Yes, Mother." She ended the call. She picked up her tea.
She looked at the television for one more moment at the headline, at the ticker, at the assembled machinery of a narrative that had been handed to the world by a man who had spent thirty years underestimating the people around him, and then she pointed the remote at the screen and turned it off.
She had correspondence to finish.
—-
In the Creed mansion, all the curtains were drawn by three in the afternoon.
