i_id | (no subject)

Crowd scene.

Zeller insisted I come to breakfast the next morning. He didn’t say a word about it, but I found myself pulling myself out of the hay long before I had decided to do so. I was suddenly hungry, like a flipped switch. The scent of hashbrowns filled my mind, Laura’s hashbrowns. She was cooking them now, I knew. Gold and hissing in the oil, and perfect. I stumbled down from the loft, following that scent that somehow carried all the way out to me. When I reached the porch, I took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Everyone knew what had happened to me last night. I could tell the moment I saw their faces. Don and Richard were so carefully blank. Laura, at the stove, wouldn’t meet my eyes, and Irene did so with a determined look. Only Renette smiled, and she brought me coffee in her small hands, pressed the cup into mine.

“I’m sorry about Jacob,” she whispered. “I miss him too.”

I gaped after her for a moment. This little girl, this child… I knew, watching her go back to helping her mother, that she spoke nothing but truth. From the mouths of babes. She’d never met Jacob. But she knew my mind now, all of them did. They knew him as I did. I looked around at them, and jumped when Allen shut the door behind me.

“Caleb, some breakfast?” The New Jersey accent was back, a contrast to the soft Boston that seemed to be Allen’s normal voice, and I looked closely at him. He nodded. “It’s Zeller right now. Allen doesn’t mind.”

I opened my mouth to ask how was I supposed to believe that, but then I knew.

It’s all right, said Allen into my mind, gentle. This is the way things are.

I held perfectly still, feeling as if my mind would overflow if I moved, like a glass with the water trembling over the edge.

“It’s not that hard,” Renette said, and her mother nodded.