It happened on an ordinary Tuesday, which seemed, after years of observing this pattern, to be when important things in this compound reliably arrived.
He was in the study reviewing the Ledger's regional expansion figures — territories onboarded, carriers found, the slow steady accumulation of the work's reach — when the bond shifted in the specific way that meant Sera was coming to him rather than him going to her.
She came in without knocking, the way she'd stopped knocking years ago, and stood in the doorway for a moment in a way that made him set down the figures.
"Something happened," he said.
"Something happened," she agreed.
She came and sat in the reading couch — the right couch, the one that had been the site of various significant things over the years — and looked at him wi
