Most mornings around Peter were chaos.
'Beautiful chaos at least.'
This chaos that had its own grammar, its own punctuation, its own tells—and she had long ago appointed herself its private grammarian, the only one sober enough to diagram the sentences before they ended in screaming or sobbing or both.
She watched him from the long chair, one leg crossed over the other with a posture no man his age could perfect. Old money or not.
He was nurturing again. Always nurturing... cutting Rebecca's steak into smaller pieces because she'd bitten her tongue one night—gallantly, Rebecca had called it, which was a tremendously generous word for what had actually been an enthusiastic accident involving too much enthusiasm and not enough coordination.
The inside of her mouth was still tender, poor lamb.
Refilling Linda's tea before she'd even noticed the cup was empty.
Sliding the salt closer to Margaret without breaking conversation.
