“Now she looks surprised.”

“Maybe she just saw your drawing.”

Renata laughed again and went back to work.

I kept my hands on the table until she had returned to her paper family, then called Samuel and asked whether he could see me later that afternoon.

At three twenty, Carmen was in the garden room at the estate, seated near a stack of unopened mail.

She looked up when I entered, and her eyes went straight to the envelope in my hand.