She thought about a corridor behind a wall and a strip of paper under a door and what it meant to find the passage through a place that had been built to keep you out.
She thought about Callaway Briggs’s hands around a coffee mug on a South Side kitchen table telling a story he didn’t know he was telling.
She put on her shoes and walked down to the corner store because her mother needed milk and the evening was too good to waste staying inside.
She walked slowly in the warm light letting the block unscroll around her. The kids on the stoop, the smell of someone’s grill, the bus heaving past with its familiar sigh.
And she let herself feel without complicating it that something had shifted. Not just in the world outside, but in the internal map she carried of what she was capable of finding when she paid attention.
Monday came clear and warm with the specific quality of a Chicago summer morning that has decided to be easy.
The lake wind gentle, the sky a clean, uninterrupted blue that made the city look from the right angle like a postcard of itself.
Imani arrived at the estate service entrance at 6:52 a.m. 8 minutes early, same as the first Monday.
DeMarco opened the door. He nodded the same way he always nodded. Inside the kitchen smelled of coffee and Phyllis’s particular brand of institutional order.
Deja and Tamara moved through their morning setup with the efficiency of long habit. Author ate his breakfast sandwich at the far end of the table.
Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. Callaway came down at 7:04, same as always. White shirt, sleeves already rolled.
He poured his coffee without looking at faces. Then he looked at Imani. He said, “After the meeting, can you come up to the study?”
“Yes.” She said. The meeting ran its course. Schedules, logistics, a reminder about the 4th of July weekend.
The estate would be closed to non-resident staff, which Phyllis confirmed with a note in delivery.
Ordinary things, the texture of a life continuing. At 7:40, Imani climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked once on the study door.
“Come in.” He said. He was at the window, the same window she’d seen from the garden the night of the party, though she hadn’t known it was his window then.
He turned when she entered and leaned against the window frame with both hands in his pockets.
And he looked at her with those dark, sharp eyes that assessed quickly and missed very little.
And for a moment, neither of them said anything. “How’s your brother?” He said. “Surgery went well.
