Two days after the argument with Jackson, Aryyah needed to escape the mansion, needed to get away from the suffocating tension and the heavy silence that had settled over everything like a funeral shroud; she remembered the portrait frames she had commissioned weeks ago, the ones she had ordered before everything fell apart, and she decided to pick them up herself rather than sending someone else.

The drive to Cletus's workshop gave her time to think, time to breathe, time to exist outside ...