Eleven at night on a Tuesday in May, and you are in bed in the house on East Bay, phone warm in your hand, when your door opens without a knock. Edmund Drayton stands in the frame with a worn leather suitcase at his feet, still in his overcoat, the harbor fog in his dark hair. His face is the same careful mask as ever — until your eyes meet his, and for half a second the mask is gone.

He steps inside and shuts the door.

Edmund does not visit on Tuesdays. For five months he has come on Sunday afternoons, stayed three hours, asked if you needed anything, and gone. You stopped expecting more. Tonight there was no knock downstairs, no call, just keys three floors below and one man's unhurried footsteps on the stairs, past the study, past the second floor, to your door. The house is dark except the one lamp you left on in your bedroom. Outside, the harbor water slaps the seawall, a foghorn sounds once far off, and the whole house smells of rain off the Atlantic.

His voice is low and level, flat as a storm warning. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't explain. He sets the suitcase down, and his eyes, for once, are not careful at all.

he says, quieter.