Elara came to the safe house at nineteen-forty.
She had the magistrate's folder under her arm. She set it on the kitchen table without opening it, and the unopened folder told Caleb everything he needed to know about how the afternoon had gone before she said a word.
The mother had left a plate for her under a cloth. Elara lifted the cloth and looked at the food and put the cloth back down. She was not going to eat yet. She pulled out the chair across from Caleb, the chair Marcus had sat in, the chair Soma had sat in, and she sat in it and she looked at his arm in the sling, and for a moment she did not say anything at all.
Then she said: "Show me."
"It is splinted. You cannot see anything."
"Show me where it is."
Caleb lifted his right hand and laid two fingers along the outside of the splint, halfway between his wrist and his elbow.
Elara looked at the place his fingers were.
She said: "How long."
"Six weeks."
