He called on a Thursday evening at seven forty-two.
She was giving Ivy her bath, which was an event of considerable logistical complexity since Ivy had recently discovered that water moved when you hit it and that this was endlessly applicable. Lina was wet from approximately the elbow down and Ivy was making the sound she made when something was both funny and required immediate repetition.
Her phone was on the bathroom shelf.
Lucien Cole.
She looked at it for two rings. Then she answered, tucking it against her shoulder, keeping both hands on Ivy.
"Lucien."
"Lina."
His voice. Still the same. Lower than she always expected when she had not heard it recently, with the particular quality of someone who had spent thirty years in rooms where being heard was not optional.
A silence.
It was not an awkward silence. It was a silence with content, the kind that exists between two people who have history enough to fill it and restraint enough to let it sit.
"Is Ivy well?" he said.
