Jinadh fell asleep again easily. Lillian, less so. The sound of breaking glass played in her memory like a skipping record. Every breath convinced her there was still gunpowder in the air.

Maybe if she read a little bit, or just went down to lie on the sofa in the library. Sometimes a change in scenery killed her insomnia. The cushions weren’t as soft as the bed, but she didn’t need comfort: only distraction.

The draft bit at her elbows, and she dug for the quilted dressing gown she kept folded at the foot of the bed, beneath the covers where it would stay warm. Slippers, too—she anticipated the icy floor with dread. It was warmer here than in Carmody, but barely.

When the library door swung open she met the wary eyes of her son, who had apparently heard her coming in time to scramble up from the sofa, but not in time to do much else. He held the afghan to his chest with two tight fists and stared at her.

“Steenie,” she said, one hand over her heart. “Temple bells, you scared me.”

“Sorry,” he said. Slowly he grew less frozen, and she realized she had scared him, too, though he was not going to admit it.

“Can I sit with you?” she asked, a little awkward in asking permission. If he had been younger, sweeter, his growing limbs less sharply lined in firelight, she would have simply sat beside him. “I can’t get to sleep.”

He nodded, and settled uneasily onto the sofa.

She took the arm opposite, a safe several feet between them. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

He glared at her, and she relapsed into silence. Sitting near him was a privilege. She had not been given leave to speak.

In the quiet that fell between them she heard the radio on low—a late-night drama of hushed voices, faint sound effects. Probably something she wouldn’t have let him listen to, if he had asked. Now, she let it go. It seemed less important than it might have, under different circumstances.

She wanted very badly to fill the silence; she had never been good at letting other people speak first. But a growing tension from the other side of the sofa told her Stephen was incubating something important, so she bit the inside of her cheek and stared into the coals.

“They just wanted to scare us,” he said, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “They could have made a real bomb. They could have blown up the house.”

A gunshot from the radio, and a woman’s exaggerated scream. Both of them jumped. Lillian let out a nervous huff of laughter, and suddenly—

“It wasn’t Uncle Cyril,” he said. “The police car. It was me.”