For three days, Arianne left early and returned late.
She would slip out of the hotel suite before the twins were awake, dressed in the sharp, tailored clothes she wore when she had business to conduct. She would kiss Franz goodbye: a brief press of lips, a murmured instruction about Lexx's feeding schedule, and then she would be gone, swallowed by the city she had once called home. In the evenings, she returned after the twins were already in bed, her face tired but satisfied, the way it always looked after a productive day of work.
In between, she video-called.
The calls came at unpredictable intervals: mid-morning, late afternoon, one afternoon during what must have been her lunch break. She would appear on Franz's phone screen, her face a little pixelated, and ask how Lexx was doing. How the twins were. Whether anyone had slept. Whether anyone had cried.
