Chapter 75

• I was not expecting her. Not that day. Not ever again, if I was honest with myself.
• The knock came early, before the office lights had fully warmed, before the staff arrived, before Claudia had even opened her laptop. The boutique floor was still dim, shadows stretching long across the sewing tables, and the windows wore a sheen of condensation from the storm the night before.
• I was holding a cup of tea, still too hot to drink. I had not yet sat down. I had only just placed my bag by the desk when the sound came. It was a gentle but firm knock on the back door, the one only people who knew the building ever used. I froze for a second, not out of fear, but something closer to recognition. There was a rhythm to it, one I had not heard in years but that lived somewhere deep in my memory.