Chapter 154

#21

Breakfast the next morning is a performance I was not given a script for.

Eli sitting at his usual end of the table, eating his usual breakfast, and responding to the things said to him with the pleasant, contained efficiency of a man doing his job and nothing else.

He doesn’t look at me any differently than he looks at the orange juice. When I come in and say good morning to the table, his eyes move to me for exactly the time it takes to register my presence and then move on.

I sit down and pour my coffee and tell myself I am not bothered by this, then I proceed to spend the next twelve minutes being very bothered by it.

“You’re quiet this morning,” my mother observes, to me.

“Migraine’s still lingering,” I say, which is the story I went to bed on and am apparentl