Sloane pov
On Saturday, Isolde came back. She didn't knock. The front door simply opened and she walked in with total authority—wearing her charcoal wool and pearls, looking like a woman who still owned the place.
I was in the sitting room with the boys. Rowe was drawing, Emmet was building a tower of blocks that kept crashing down, and Jasper was reading by the window.
Isolde stopped in the doorway. She looked at the boys, then at me, and her expression sharpened.
"I'd like a word," she said, "with my daughter-in-law."
The way she said daughter-in-law made it sound like an insult.
"Of course," I said, standing up. "Boys, why don't you"
"They can stay," Isolde said, sitting by the window like she owned the place. "What I have to say won't take long."
I sat back down, folded my hands, and waited. In the small space before whatever was coming next, my brain did what it always does when it is frightened—it went somewhere else. It went back to the novel.
