The letter from his mother arrived on a Friday morning in early December, three weeks before winter break, delivered through the academy's external correspondence system in the standard sealed format that family communications used.
William read it at breakfast, which he rarely did with correspondence — he usually waited until he had private time to read anything that might require a reaction he preferred not to produce in public. But he'd seen his mother's seal and opened it without thinking, and by the time he'd registered that the dining hall was not the ideal location for this particular letter, he was already two paragraphs in.
He read it to the end.
Then he folded it and put it in his jacket pocket and ate the rest of his breakfast without saying anything.
Liam, who had the specific sensitivity to William's silence that came from months of learning to read it, waited approximately six minutes before saying, "Letter from home?"
"Yes."
"Good news or complicated news."
