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I smile. “Melted him entirely.”

“Tragic.”

“Beautiful.” Alcott looks at me then. His gaze sharpens, softens, and does something between the two that makes my ribs feel briefly too small for my heart.

“You have become sentimental.”

“I have always been sentimental.”

“You once called grief an overdecorated hallway.”

“A very sentimental observation.”

He huffs a laugh. Then the sound fades, and the room returns to quiet.

“Do you think she will be all right?” he asks.

I do not answer quickly. We have learned not to answer wounded questions with pretty lies. Instead, I look toward the ceiling, toward the room where Olive sleeps and Edward keeps watch.

“I think she will be many things,” I say. “All right may be one of them, but often enough.”

Alcott closes his eyes. “I want often enough.”

“So do I.”

His hand tightens around the glass. “I hate that I cannot solve it.”

“I know darling.”

“I hate that Edward looks at her as though he would tear the world apart if only he could find the correct seam.”

“I know.”

“I hate that you make jokes when your eyes look like that.”

I glance at him. “Like what?”

“Like you are standing in a grave and flirting with the worms.” He remarks.

A laugh escapes me as Alcott’s mouth curves, but his eyes remain solemn.

“You see too much,” I say.

“Yes.” I raise an eyebrow.

“How inconvenient.”

“Very.” I take the glass from his hand and set it on the mantel. He allows it. That alone is an intimacy. Alcott does not like being emptied of tools. Glasses, blades, pens, theories, anything he can hold between himself and feeling too much. Tonight, he lets me remove the brandy from his fingers.

I turn back to him. His gaze drops to my hand, then lifts. “Lazarus.” The way he says my name is not warning.

Not quite an invitation either. Something more fragile. The metaphorical door opening a fraction wider.

I step closer. “You are allowed to be tired, Alcott.”

His jaw shifts. “I know.”

“No, you know it academically. That is not the same thing.”