ELENA

I waited until the house gave me the dark and the quiet, and then I went looking for the thing she’d carried in against her body this afternoon.

It took until well past midnight. I lay in my bed with my shoes still on and listened to the house go down one sound at a time, the last of the staff on the stairs, the water in the pipes, a door, and then nothing. Dominic had not come to me. I hadn’t expected him to. When the silence had held long enough that I trusted it, I got up and ...