The blinds had been lowered to the same rung all afternoon, and the light came through them in narrow bands that laid themselves across the long table and stopped, as if even the day had been asked to wait. Arthur Penrose sat at the head of that table in a charcoal suit whose cuffs had gone soft at the edge, his gray hair combed back from a forehead marked by years of reading other people's last intentions. A manila folder lay under his left hand. On its tab, in his own small printing, were the words Harlan, Evelyn M. He had not opened it yet. He had the habit, with families, of letting the room arrive before the paper did.
Helen Crowe had arrived first, which was her way. She was fifty-two and wore a navy dress with a belt she had not needed to check in the mirror. Her earrings were small and gold. She had set her handbag on the chair beside her and her hands on the table, one over the other, and she had not moved them when her brother came in. Mark Harlan was forty-nine. The gray jacket he wore had been buttoned in the elevator and unbuttoned by the time he reached the chair, as if the room itself had argued with him. He did not sit at once. He looked at the folder, then at Penrose, then at the empty chair that had been left, without comment, on Helen's other side.
"She may not come," Helen said.
"She will," Mark said. "Somebody at your office has a mouth."
"It is not my office."