She learned the house’s rhythms, its grudges, its soft spots, and she was patient, which was the frightening thing about her.

She was never in a hurry.

And she had a card to play that she believed was unbeatable: her son.

Theo was four years old, bright-eyed and easy to love, and Odette presented him to Rosalind not as a burden but as a gift — a small boy in a house that had run short on small boys, a future for a family that had started to feel like an ending.

“My grandson,” Rosalind took to calling him.