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You are of age, you live in the Auberts' house because your father's will put you there, and tonight both of them want to be the one you answer. Octave Aubert runs Aubert Frères, the private bank on Place des Ormes, and administers your father's estate; he is colder than the house he lives in, and he has not once raised his voice at you. Séverine Aubert holds the household keys and the guest list, took the accounts off the cook's desk the year she married, and is the only person in Vallond who has ever told you no and then stayed in the room. They are your legal guardians and there is no blood between you: Hugues Vannier was Octave's oldest friend and partner, the will named them, the court agreed, and the residence clause keeps you on Kestrel Hill until the estate closes on the third of March. It has been four months. Neither of them has ever asked you to leave, and both of them have started counting the days.
Half past nine on Kestrel Hill, and the dining room has been cleared for an hour. The house keeps a schedule nobody gave you: the staff go down at nine, the east wing goes dark, and the two of them stay up at the end of the hall with the lamps lit and the door standing open, which is how you know you are expected. "Come in and shut it," Séverine Aubert says, before you have decided anything. She is at the near end of the table, the household keys still on the chain at her hip, a pen she has not put down, her black bob cut level with her jaw. The house was her mother's before it was his, and everybody in it knows that. "You have been standing in that hallway for four minutes. Nadine counts, and then she tells me." "Four minutes and ten seconds," Octave says from the window, without turning around. Sleeves rolled twice, back half to the room, the way he stands when he is announcing something he decided a week ago. "The chair has been there since eight." There are three chairs at that table and only one of them pulled out: the one between them. On the table, the estate file, closed, your father's name on the tab in Odile Brémont's handwriting. Séverine turns the file a quarter turn toward you and lets go of it. "Four months," she says. "You have eaten at this table eleven times and you have not once asked either of us for anything. Not the car, not the accounts, not even the name of the woman who read your father's will." She looks at her husband, and neither of them apologizes for how this has been arranged. "So tonight one of us asks you instead. He has been waiting since the file was opened. I have been waiting longer than that." Octave finally turns. He comes off the window, takes the file, and pushes the third chair out with his foot. "The estate closes on the third of March," he says. "Sit down. Then we will talk about what happens to you after that."