A widowed businessman returns early to his quiet mansion, ready to confront the housekeeper, but what he sees changes everything

Part One: The Architecture of Absence

Owen Mercer had become, over the course of eleven months, a man made almost entirely of routine.

He rose at five-fifteen without an alarm — grief had dismantled his ability to sleep past dawn with the same thoroughness it had dismantled most other things — and he was in the car by five-forty,continue reading …