Hopefully, she’d get some sleep. She needed it. And Jules doubted she was going to get much herself.

* * *

As it happened, Jules got to bed by midnight for once. Vivian hadn’t returned to the office, and by the time Jules got through her tasks by eight p.m., she was actually free to…leave. The liberty would have been intoxicating, if she hadn’t spent most of it worrying about her impossible boss’s impossible situation. Nevertheless, by the time midnight rolled around, Jules collapsed into bed and realized she was exhausted enough to sleep the whole night through.

So of course it made sense that her phone would go off in the middle of the night. And of course it would be Vivian.

Struggling into wakefulness, she peered at the display, wondering in a panic if she’d missed her alarm and was late for work or something, when she realized it was three thirty in the morning. Was there an emergency?

It was a FaceTime request.

The hell? Vivian had never wanted to FaceTime before. And she wanted to do it now? Jules patted down her unruly hair as she sat up, took a second to gather her thoughts, and accepted the request.

Maybe it was an accident. Vivian could have meant to call her the normal way instead. Or maybe she’d meant to send the request to someone else.

When Vivian’s face looked back at her, though, Jules knew it wasn’t a mistake. She looked composed, not surprised. Her cheeks were pale, even in the dim light coming from somewhere off-screen. Was Vivian in her bedroom too? A framed black-and-white photo of trees hung on the wall behind her. It could go in any room. Vivian could be anywhere right now in her house.

Normally, Vivian Carlisle’s presence filled up any room she was in. Now she looked small and diminished, even on a phone screen.

“Vivian,” Jules rasped.

“Cancel the clinic appointment.”

“Huh?” Jules pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. Lack of sleep made her imprudent enough to say, “What’s wrong?”

“A lot of things,” Vivian said, “obviously. But I want you to cancel the appointment, at least for now.”

“Oh,” Jules said, her head spinning, her eyelids still heavy. She meant to say Of course. Instead it came out, “If you’re sure?”

Fuck. Wrong. Even this sleep-deprived, Jules should have known better than to ask that question. She was about to get her head bitten off.

“Turn on the light,” Vivian said quietly.

“What? Oh.” Here she was, sitting in the dark with only the phone’s screen to light up her face, making her look awful. She lunged for the bedside lamp and turned it on.

Seeing herself in the tiny screen in the upper right corner, she looked a wreck with unruly hair and squinting eyes that hadn’t adjusted yet to the light.