The guest room sat at the back of the safe house, above the kitchen.
Caleb stopped outside the door at seventeen-fifty-eight.
Below him, his mother moved around the stove.
His brother laughed at something.
That sound held Caleb in the hallway longer than the door did.
He could not remember the last time he had heard his brother laugh. Not a small exhale. Not a polite answer. A real laugh, coming up through floorboards from a kitchen where their mother was cooking too much rice.
He listened until the laugh ended.
Then he knocked.
Iris opened the door.
She already had her coat on. The logbook was tucked under her left arm. She had been preparing to leave whether Caleb came upstairs or not, because Iris did not trust other people to arrive on time for painful conversations.
She stepped aside. Caleb entered, and she closed the door behind him.
"I'm going for a walk," she said quietly.
"Iris."
"Listen first."
She kept her voice low enough that it belonged only to the room.
