She'd lost a lot of people, before Darrow, many of them abrupt, a sudden shearing of the person out of the world. Darrow was more peaceful than that, a place where people died of natural causes and only occasionally of others, rather than the other way around. But it wasn't free of that moment where you looked down and a part of you was missing.

Eponine had had a harsh life, too, before Darrow; she didn't think that inured you any from loss. From the phantom limb of I just wanted her to know.

"Yeah," she said, ignoring the phone to step past it and Eponine's arm to wrap her in a hug. "Yeah, I know. She would have wanted to know."