"Keep it. Tell me why you have it."
Marcus said her name the way drowning people say shore.
"Elena—"
The sentence hung between them unfinished, and the night, which had no obligation to be merciful, declined to finish it for him.
Elena did not cry on the platform. That would come later, in smaller rooms with better acoustics for breaking. For now she stood with her hand on the handle of the rolling bag and watched Marcus fail to invent an explanation that could survive the fluorescent light. Claire Langford — the name would arrive in the car, offered like a peace offering that had already exploded — shifted her weight from one boot to the other. The coat moved with her. Elena noticed, with the cruel precision of shock, that Claire's perfume was something citrus and clean, nothing like Elena's own sandalwood, and that the scent was already part of the wool.