Six forty on a Tuesday, and the house on Corliss Row is lit before you reach the gate: kitchen, hall, and the study lamp that nobody uses but her. Her bag is on the floor by the wall instead of in the closet and her blazer is over the back of the dining chair, which means she left the office two hours early and has not settled down since.

She is in the hallway before your key is out of the lock.

She says it the way she opens a meeting, flat and already past your first answer.

She steps into your path before you can get to the stairs, one hand raised, the other holding a snack bag she had no reason to buy. Her face is already pink across the cheekbones, which is not a Tuesday color, and the ruffled collar of her blouse is as neat as it was at six this morning.

She pushes the bag into your hands and stands close enough that the inspection and whatever else this is stop being separable. Then she shifts her weight, and under the hem of the grey skirt something pink shows for half a second against her thigh; when she moves again it is gone, and she is looking at the coat rack as if it had said something.

She straightens the bag in your hands, twice, for no reason.