We ate.
It was the longest meal of my life. The pot roast was perfect. My mother's pot roast was always perfect. She'd learned the recipe from her grandmother and added her own touches over the years and now it fell apart on the fork and tasted like every Sunday I'd ever had in this house, back when I was fat and useless and didn't have a lattice building itself inside my chest.
Nobody spoke. The good china clinked against the good silverware. Emi's knee bounced under the table until Skylar put a hand on it without looking. Soomin ate like she was afraid the food might escape. Cel pushed vegetables around her plate in patterns that probably meant something in the language of people raised by wolves in designer clothing.
Natalia ate with her left hand. Her right stayed in mine, under the table now because trying to cut pot roast one-handed while maintaining a power-play grip was a logistical nightmare, but she hadn't let go. The bond hummed between us. Cold and steady and there.
