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She catches me looking at my hand. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Her eyebrows rise. I know that expression now. She does not believe me, but before she can ask another question, a high buzzing sound comes from outside.

It isn’t a car. The sound stays near the house, moves away, then returns.

Rachel turns toward the front window. “What the hell is that?”

“I hoped you knew.”

A small, dark object passes in front of the window.

“It’s a damn drone.” Rachel moves closer to the glass, then stops. “And if there’s a camera on that thing…”

She yanks the curtain shut, crosses to the other window, and then moves through the cottage closing every curtain and blind. By the time she returns to the kitchen, the morning light has narrowed to pale strips around the edges.

“I’ve been awake for ten minutes,” she says. “I already hate today.”

The buzzing continues beyond the glass.

“Can they look inside?”

“I don’t know.” She reaches for her phone, makes a call and puts it on speaker. “But we’re not going to make it easy.”

Blair answers sounding as though Rachel woke her, but the sleep disappears from her voice as soon as Rachel tells her about the drone.

“Camera?”

“Almost certainly.”

Blair swears under her breath. She tells us she has been reading since before sunrise about privacy, drones, and areas of constitutional law she hasn’t thought about since school, which leads her to what she calls an important professional conclusion.

“We need a different lawyer.”

Rachel leans against the counter. “That is an extremely disappointing lack of versatility.”

“I’m a divorce attorney, not the Federal Aviation Administration.”

Despite everything, Rachel laughs.

Blair has already called Jose Oliva, a federal civil-rights attorney, and wants him speaking directly to me. Until he calls back, we’re to keep the curtains shut and ignore the drones.

Rachel looks toward the thin strip of morning light around the curtain. “That’s all?”

“For the next twenty minutes, yes. Try not to acquire any additional constitutional problems before I call back.”

After the call, Rachel makes toast she barely eats while I sit at the kitchen table. She holds up a second slice before putting it on her plate.

“Want some?”

I think about the popcorn from last night. “No.”

“Not hungry?”

“I do not think I get hungry.”

Rachel pauses. “So you can eat, but you don’t need to.”