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“I am providing moral support.”
“You are eating the preserves directly from the jar.” Edward glares at him.
Lazarus appears from the pantry doorway with a spoon in his mouth and an expression of grave innocence. “I am ensuring they have not been poisoned,” he states through a mouthful.
Alcott marches back to the table, where he has arranged a newspaper, three notebooks, a cup of coffee, a diagram of something mechanical, and what appears to be a dismantled pocket watch.
“At this hour, darling?” Lazarus asks.
“Geniuses never cease even for breakfast, darling,” Alcott replies.
“And you are not a genius,” Edward mutters.
I sit at the table with my tea between both hands, watching them as if they are a play written by a madman with a fondness for domestic disasters. A month ago, silence filled every corner of my life. Now there is this.
Edward burning eggs. Lazarus stealing jam. Alcott taking apart a pocket watch because, in his words, “It ticked with arrogance.”
Morrigan stretching one paw toward a plate of bacon. Thanatos tapping his beak against the window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Alcott glances toward him. “He wants in.”
“No,” Edward says immediately.
Lazarus gasps. “How cruel.”
“He is a vulture.”
“He is family,” Laz argues.
“He tried to steal my cravat yesterday.”
“It was an ugly cravat.”
Edward turns slowly as Lazarus lazily smiles. I take a sip of tea to hide my own, too late. Edward sees, his face falls, then the spatula lowers.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” Edward shakes his head.
“Do not look at me like that,” I chide, hugging my mug between my hands.
“Like what?”
“Like I am a sunrise and you are emotionally unprepared for weather,” I exclaim.
Alcott snorts into his coffee as Lazarus presses one hand to his chest. “A poetic accusation.”
Edward’s mouth twitches. “I was only looking.”
“You are always only looking.”
“Yes,” he says, quietly enough that the room almost misses it. “I like that I can.”
The kitchen stills, though not painfully. Not the old kind of stillness. This one is warmer. A blanket laid over something tender and I look down at my tea. The steam curls upward, soft and playfully. I am still learning how to let happiness sit beside me without suspecting it carries a knife. Some mornings, laughter feels foreign in my mouth. Other mornings, a sound from the street sends my body backward before my mind remembers where I am.
At times Edward finds me in the garden before dawn, and neither of us speaks because both of us understand what it means to survive the night and not want applause for it. But this morning, the eggs are frightened, the preserves are threatened. The vulture is offended, and I am here at my table with my handsome monsters. Morrigan hooks one claw into the bacon plate and drags it half an inch closer.
