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“I was already making them.”

“You made two.”

“You were coming.”

She glanced at her plate. The eggs were perfectly cooked—neither flashy nor showy, just right—someone had clearly perfected this on quiet mornings, unnoticed by others. She took a bite before her mind registered what she was doing. By then, she had already eaten it, and there was no way to undo it.

“These are good,” she said, as if she were confessing under duress.

He ate his own without comment—his way of saying yes.

They sat outside by the ocean, with the kitchen lamp hanging above, sharing a meal at an hour when the usual social norms had already fallen silent—a rare intimacy that only persisted that late at night. She felt his gaze across the table, which had nothing to do with the fire in her hands and everything to do with the fact that it was nearly 2:30 a.m. He watched her as he always did — fully engaged, without any distance, as if she were the only thing in the room worth observing.

She found herself talking before she decided to.

She looked at her glass. “I kept waiting for the moment in the marriage. Years of it. The moment I could point to — there. That’s where it went wrong.”

He laid his fork down, fully focused — a level of attention most people couldn’t muster.

“It never came,” she whispered softly, tracing the edge of the table with her finger. “There was no specific moment, just a gradual process—learning to navigate around others to avoid friction, deciding which topics to avoid, and choosing which shades of opinions are easier to carry. It’s about wanting the things that are acceptable to want.” She gazed at the table thoughtfully. “You do it slowly enough that you hardly notice when you start to shrink, and suddenly you’re forty-three, wondering if you know how to take up space anymore because you’ve spent so long making yourself comfortably small.”

He didn’t move.

“I was good at it,” she said, turning her glass slowly in a half-circle on the table. “That’s the hardest part to explain. It wasn’t usually resentful—I was efficient about it. I understood what was needed and adapted accordingly; we were functional, and people believed we were okay. We were okay. Until the day I finally realized I’d been lonely for eleven years and too caught up in being fine to see it.”

The ocean shifted outside. The kitchen held the silence the way rooms do at three in the morning—different from any other hour.

“You didn’t disappear.” He looked at her directly. “You got buried. That’s not the same.”

She looked at him.

“Buried things are still there.” He met her eyes. “Disappeared things aren’t.”

She sat with that for a moment. “You know that’s either very comforting or extremely ominous.”

“Probably both.”

“Both,” she agreed. The distinction landed quietly, right where it hurt. She pressed her palms flat against the table, feeling the grain of the wood he’d made himself.

“I know that.” Quieter than she’d intended. “I’m getting there.”

“I know you are.”

She held his gaze, and the warmth in her palms went quiet, as it did when she let herself be honest. She was being more honest now than she had been with many people. Across the table, he turned toward her — the way he received things without flinching, without redirecting, without making her manage his reaction — doing things to her chest she’d need to examine later, somewhere other than his kitchen at three in the morning.

She turned to him. “Tell me about yours. Not the official version.”

He was quiet. Considering.

“Her name was Sela.” He glanced down at the table. “Twenty-eight years ago, she studied the tide-pool systems along the northern cliffs. She had been in Spelltide Cove for two years when the Rift caused a major breach at the northern anchor.”

He looked at the table.

“I was managing the pack response along the eastern boundary. The plan was sound, and the execution was proper. I was exactly in the right place.” He turned his glass. “The breach caused creatures to pass through the northern area where she was stationed. I controlled the breach. I wasn’t there when she needed me.”

Althea didn’t breathe.

“She didn’t.” He picked up his glass. “The breach was quick. I was on the wrong side of the boundary. She was alone when it counted, and I was absent.” He put the glass down. “Since then, I haven’t tried to hold both at once.”