Chapter 20: The Upside-Down Has a Geography

They drove back through the dark in silence, El occupying the passenger seat of Joyce's Dart with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the road ahead, not looking at anything the headlights actually illuminated. Holmes had learned, in the three weeks since the grocery store, to read her silences as he read documents: for what was present, not what was absent. She was not empty. She was processing.

He did not interrupt her.

The rented room above the hardware store was cold when they arrived. Holmes lit the hotplate for its minimal heat contribution and spread his case materials across the central table while El removed her shoes and stood in the middle of the room in her socks, looking at the wall.