She came to me without warning on a grey Tuesday morning, which was the first time Evelyne had ever approached me without the architecture of an occasion around her.
No manufactured paperwork. No manufactured reasons. Just Evelyne herself, in a plain day gown I had never seen her wear before, standing in the doorway of the small records room where I was reviewing the estate's winter supply projections with Eli. She looked at Eli for a moment, and then she looked at me, and the look was not the calculated warmth she usually deployed or the wounded innocence she had performed in the council chamber. It was something I had not seen on her face before.
It was discomfort.
"Could we speak privately?" she asked.
Eli looked at me. I gave him the small, barely perceptible nod that meant: yes, this is fine, leave us. He gathered his documents and went with the quiet efficiency of a man who would wait precisely where I expected him to wait.
The door closed.
