Something was different about Gabriel on December 28th. Autumn couldn't name it. She couldn't point to anything specific or say, here, this is where it changed. But she felt how obvious it was.
He was still warm, still moved, and talked the same way. He was still every bit the man he always appeared to be. But there was something else that she hadn't noticed before. It felt as though he was holding something in and the effort it took was beginning to show.
She didn't let on that she'd noticed. That was the most important thing. She kept moving through the day the same way she'd been moving through all the others. She was putting on a performance, and she knew it, but the only thing that mattered was that he didn't know it.
She made him laugh twice at breakfast. That wasn't hard. She'd
