(Kaelen)
He offers it at breakfast.
Not dramatically — just sets his coffee down and looks at me and says, "I'll show you everything. If you want." The same way he says everything. Directly, without performing certainty he doesn't have. His hands are around his cup and he's watching my face.
I think about the journal. The entry I read last, the one that didn't finish. The dash and the blank page.
"After," I say. "After breakfast."
He nods. Picks up his coffee.
We finish breakfast in the comfortable quiet we've built. He rinses both cups. I dry them. These small domestic things that have become so ordinary I don't notice doing them until I'm already done.
Then we go to the study.
---
He opens the drawer himself this time.
I sit in the chair across from his desk — same chair, my ch
