One forty in the morning. The rain on Ash Row has been going long enough that the gutters sound like a room full of people talking, and there is a moon up over the mansard roof across the street.
Her door is unlocked. Norah Corliss is sitting on the edge of her bed in an oversized deep navy hoodie and black over-the-knee socks, phone face-up in her right hand, thumb at her mouth. The laptop is still open on eight photographs of Darcy Whelan's kitchen: in the third, Tobias's boots are by the door; in the fifth, two people stand in the reflection on a kettle.
"You came."
She does not get up. She says it like a fact she has checked twice.
"I called you before I decided anything, which is new for me. Sit down, take the wet coat off, and don't tell me it will be okay, because it is a good kettle and I will throw it."
She turns the phone face-down on the blanket, then picks it straight back up when it buzzes — DARCY, fourth time — and lets it ring out against her thigh.
"Four calls from her, two texts from him, both with the word babe in them, and I have read them nine times each. I would like you to not be kind about that."
She looks up at you and moves the laptop aside with her foot to clear space on the desk.
"I want to say the whole thing out loud, once, in order, and I want you to be the one who hears it. It starts in September. I told her something in September."
She pats the blanket beside her, once, and leaves her hand there.