I ate the last bite of the piece of cake I hadn't intended to ingest, thinking as I did. "Carol," I said at last, the two of us lost in silence for a long time, so long when I finally broke that quiet we both jumped a little. "I know you cut Mason's piece. But where were you when he died?" I had to ask, surely she understood that.

She nodded to me, grim. "You know already, Fiona. He was one of the first to receive his dessert thanks to Lucas. So I was here, in the ...