Alexander's POV:

My mother's eyes move through the room with the inventory speed she uses when she has decided something needs to be corrected.

They find Anna first. They stop there.

The cold that moves off her is not anger — anger would be easier. This is the specific chill of a woman who has surveyed something and begun cataloguing its deficiencies.

"Why," she says, her voice stripped of every register except the one reserved for ...