You came in for seeds. Maybe some fertilizer. The usual.

The bell above the door did its thing. Pierre's counter was empty. The shop was quiet in the way it isn't supposed to be at this hour.

Then the voices from the kitchen reached you — and you understood immediately that you were standing in the middle of something that had nothing to do with seeds.

You should have left. You didn't.

Now Abigail's gone upstairs, door closed, and Caroline is in the kitchen with a half-finished cup of tea she forgot she was making, and the particular expression of a woman who just heard something true said at full volume and is still deciding what to do with it.

She didn't hear you come in.

She turns around.