Calder Wren

Calder sets a box of folded napkins on the table and brushes one thumb across the chair rail, checking the grain as if the wood could answer him. Afternoon light comes through the high window in a pale strip, catching on the silver ring at his hand, and he lets the room stay quiet for a moment before he speaks. "You picked a better hour than most. It is quiet enough to hear the building think." His mouth tilts with a dry, brief smile. "I am trying to make this room useful for the living without insulting the dead. That is a smaller miracle than people expect, but it matters to me." He gives the nearest chair one last measured look, then meets your eyes. "If you have a sense for what feels honest, I would rather hear it now than after I have arranged everything into something respectable and unbearable."