Chapter 19: Guinevere Chooses Her Own Moment

The coffee maker finished its cycle at six fifty-three, and Guinevere stood at the kitchen counter and listened to it stop.

She had been awake since four. Not the restless wakefulness of someone waiting for something to happen, but the clean, deliberate wakefulness of someone who had already decided and was now simply waiting for the appointed hour. She had lain in the dark of the guest room — she had moved to the guest room eleven days ago, quietly, without announcement, and Arthur had not asked why, which told her something she had filed away — and she had rehearsed nothing. That was the decision she had made somewhere around two in the morning. No rehearsal. No architecture. She had spent twelve years building things that looked inevitable after the fact, and she understood better than most people that the appearance of inevitability required enormous prior construction, and she was not willing to construct this. It needed to land the way it actually was.

She poured two cups. This was automatic, not symbolic. They had always drunk the same coffee.