She was waiting in the library.
Not dramatically — Maren did not do dramatic waiting. She was in her chair, the one she'd occupied the first night, with a cup of tea at the correct temperature and a folder on her knee and the composed expression of a woman who had been anticipating a conversation and had arranged the conditions for it.
She looked up when I entered.
"Sit," she said.
"I prefer to stand," I said.
"You always say that," she said. "And you always sit."
I sat.
She looked at me for a moment with the specific quality of attention she used when assembling several things simultaneously — what she saw, what she knew, what they meant in combination.
"I'll say first," she said, "that I am glad. In my specific way, which as you now know is less visible than other people's gladne
