4338.201 · July 20, 2018 AD
Five Days
Home should be sanctuary. The kettle whistles. Sandra scrolls through gala confirmations. Amelia drifts past without eye contact. Ordinary morning. Ordinary distance. Then the doorbell rings—sharp, singular, too early for anything routine. The courier carries no logo. The parcel carries no sender. Just a name Charlie hasn't heard spoken aloud in years: Charles Claiborne. Formal. Deliberate. A name for documents and gravestones. Someone knows where he lives. Someone wants him to know they know.
July 20th, 2018. The Claiborne house, Battery Point.
Charlie steps back into the architecture of family—the sounds of breakfast, the geometry of avoidance, the careful choreography of people who share walls but not weather. Sandra's attention belongs to the gala. Amelia's belongs to her phone. The theatre might as well be a dream, except for the weight still pressing against his chest.
Then the doorbell fractures the morning.
The parcel arrives without explanation. No company name, no return address, no trail to follow. Just cream cardstock thick enough to feel expensive, addressed to a name no one uses. Charles Claiborne. The formality lands like a slap. Whoever sent this doesn't know him—or knows him too well, in ways that have nothing to do with friendship.
What's inside wasn't meant to comfort. Wasn't meant to threaten, exactly. It was meant to be understood. A message wrapped in glass and metal, carrying a date that sits five days in the future and refuses to let go.
The theatre found him at work. Now something else has found him at home.
And home was supposed to be the one place the job couldn't follow.
