She told them at dinner, two days after returning.
Not everything — Asha's full letter was going into the Garden's archive, properly documented, eventually shared with anyone in the Ledger's network who needed it. But the shape of it. The first sentence. The gift coming. The idea that the burial had always been the wound, not the bloodline itself.
The table heard it the way this table always heard things that mattered — with the specific, attentive quiet that was the compound's version of understanding that this moment would be in the record and deserved to be received accordingly.
Luna had both feet on the ground, the way she had for years now, her phone face-down, just listening.
Maren sat at the end of the table with the expression of someone who was hearing the shape of things she'
