Chapter 1 - The Foyer
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I set down the pastry box and moved quietly toward the sound, my exhaustion from the twelve-hour flight suddenly forgotten, replaced by a growing, unsettling alertness.
What I found in the foyer stopped me completely.
Claire knelt on the marble floor, eight months pregnant, her cardigan sleeves pushed up as she gently worked a washcloth over my mother's bare feet, submerged in a large silver basin of water. Tears streamed silently down her face, her shoulders shaking with the particular, exhausted quality of someone who had been crying for some time before I arrived.
My mother sat above her in the gold brocade armchair, dressed impeccably despite the early hour, one finger jabbing accusatorially toward Claire's bent head.