Chapter 39: The Motion
The mountains let them go just before dark.
That was how it felt — not that they drove out of the mountains but that the mountains made a decision about them, assessed what had happened in Lugano and found it sufficient, and released them back to the plain. The landscape opened. The particular drama of the Alpine approach gave way to the flat ordered geometry of Lombardy and then to the city's outskirts and then to Milan itself — the lights coming up as the last of the daylight went down, the skyline assembling itself against the dark with the confident permanence of something that has never considered the possibility of not being there.
Élise watched it arrive.
