“That’s not the point.”
“No. The point is that the room smells like surrender.”
His face went still.
For a moment she thought she had gone too far. Then Caleb looked past her toward the gray winter light entering his room. His jaw tightened, but he did not tell her to close the curtains. His eyes moved over the lawn below, the bare maples, the old fountain drained for winter, the rose garden cut down to thorny sticks.
“My mother planted those roses,” he said after a long while.
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