Archive of Our Own

He is, perhaps, trying a little too hard.

He can see it the very moment that Frau Liebermann comes bustling and smiling into the hall to receive him and to ensure in her usual fussy way that his coat and hat have been taken, and that he isn’t tracking Leopoldstadt mud across her beautiful floors; he’s never quite sure of the extent to which he is a guest versus a tradesman, but he supposes that tradesmen don’t sit at the dinner table with the family every Friday evening. He supposes, too, that Frau Liebermann’s smile doesn’t tilt at one corner in slight confusion and mild concern when her chimney-sweep looks a little worn. Oskar bolsters his own smile – he is, after all, pleased to be here, and in no way pretending – but her eyes narrow minutely the very moment that he does, and he is abruptly reminded just where Max gets it from.

“Frau Liebermann,” he says politely, taking her outstretched hand to shake it in a desperate attempt to head off any inquiries. He would not call the Liebermann family nosey, but he does think it somewhat unlikely that he will make it to the end of the evening with all secrets intact.

“Inspector,” she says warmly, taking him by the elbow and steering him into the dining room. As per usual, Leah is in her seat and Herr Liebermann is lingering by his bookshelf, and Max is nowhere to be seen; Oskar has, by now, become accustomed to preceding his friend to the man’s own dinner table. Leah, laughing, had once wondered if Oskar wasn’t a better son of the family than Max; Max had huffed indulgently and bickered with his father about the idea of leaving the family business to Oskar, who had been unable to do much more than hope his beard was covering his blush, and be very quietly pleased. Now, as he enters, Herr Liebermann puts his book down and crosses over to shake his hand and thank him for coming, as though it were a personal favour and not, at this point, a regular habit; the handshake is a little firmer than usual, and the man’s soft eyes dart quickly over Oskar’s face as though looking for something missing or altered, and then he is waved into his usual seat next to Leah. She’s reading a letter in a peculiar, cramped hand, as though written by someone with a very good schooling and an incurable hatred of blank paper, but she glances up to smile warmly at him. He is almost expecting something else, after the examination her parents have given him, but she just straightens the page between her fingers and goes back to peering at the letter.

After a little light discussion of the weather lately (hot, oppressive) and the traffic (incurable, often stationary), there is a clattering at the door and they fall into indulgent silence to better appreciate the sound of Frau Liebermann chiding her errant son for his lateness as though he were only thirteen, not thirty, as he makes token protests and abandons his hat, coat and bag rather randomly in the hall. “Go on,” Herr Liebermann says at last with a quick gesture at Leah, “put your letter away.”

“You’re as bad as Mama,” she says dryly and her father huffs, long-suffering. The letter is folded neatly and tucked into the pocket of her skirts in a moment; she glances sidelong at Oskar and says, smiling, “Well, Inspector, what shall we chide you for? I should hate for you to feel left out.”

Herr Liebermann rolls his eyes, but Oskar racks his brain. She is very clearly asking him to laugh with her, but he is not used to it; he has never had a woman show friendship and affection by teasing him, and he worries that he will overstep or misjudge as he does not when speaking with her brother. His mother had never had the time and freedom to laugh, in his youth; Else had not been inclined to teasing at first, and later… But he will try, for Leah. “I could ask if your letter is from Daniel, and then you might ask me not to intrude,” he offers, making his expression very solicitous as if he were only obliging her; to his relief, she laughs.

“That will do. No, actually; he wrote a week or two ago to say that he’s far too busy with his schoolwork and games to write to me very often, which I think is a rather good review of the new school.”

Oskar nods, pleased. He hadn’t met the boy under the best of circumstances, but even if he did not think well of the lad he would wish him good fortune for the Liebermanns’ sakes. Even setting that aside, he had received a short note in careful, schoolboy-precise writing from Daniel thanking him very stiltedly for his fairness and support after the case had been wound up; Max and Leah had never said a word about it, and Oskar is quite sure that Daniel had done it of his own accord. He is glad that Leah indulges him in his interest in the boy’s welfare.

“My schoolfriend, Ruth Lawton,” Leah begins, but then Max is being ushered into his seat and Frau Liebermann is glancing anxiously at the clock on the mantel, and everything falls quiet for a moment before Shabbat begins.

“What was that about Mrs Lawton?” Frau Liebermann asks once the singing has concluded and all the food is served.

“I’ve had a letter,” Leah says, eyes firmly on her cutlery as she busies herself with the food before her. “You know she married again in the Spring – she’s Mrs Glasman now – well, she’s expecting a baby before the end of the year.”

“Oh, how lovely,” Frau Liebermann says, briefly resting her fork on her plate to smile at the thought. Leah flicks her gaze upwards to return it, very shortly and without much enthusiasm – at least, Oskar thinks not. He cannot pretend to know her well enough. “You must send our congratulations.”

“Yes, of course,” Leah says quickly. If she were a suspect, and he being paid to study her behaviour, he would say that she would like to change the subject; as though the topic had been broached only for Oskar, and not her mother. But she is not a suspect, so he must let it lie.

“Such a shame about the Lawton lad,” Herr Liebermann says. “I know the Glasmans slightly; they’re a good family.”

“It’s high time she started again,” Frau Liebermann says firmly, and with evident satisfaction; from the corner of his eye, Oskar watches the curl of Leah’s mouth twitch very briefly and then solidify, the expression set in stone, and he sits in silent agony with her trying desperately to think of something to say. “People oughtn’t be on their own.”

Oskar looks up to find Max watching him intently; when Max’s gaze shifts, Oskar finds that it is to watch Oskar’s finger tapping repeatedly against the side of his knife. “Mama,” Max says gently; he makes a concerted effort to stop the motion.

When Max raises one eyebrow at her, Frau Liebermann’s eyes widen abruptly. “Oh, Inspector – I didn’t mean-”

He musters a smile. “Not at all.”

“Your situation is different, of course,” she says, wringing her hands.

He could – he could leave it there. It pains him to think of it, it will alter the character of the dinner completely, they have not asked to know. But at his side, Leah is looking harried, and small, and he doesn’t think she ought to. Her mother had not, after all, apologised to her.

So he spreads his hands and makes the effort to smile his self-deprecation. “Sadly, no longer,” he says. Herr Liebermann puts his knife and fork down in confusion, and Max is staring at him with analytical intent, but Oskar is chiefly aware that, in the corner of his eye, Leah has uncurled from her smallness and is watching him with interest and concern. “My – wife wrote to me. She has asked for a divorce – an official one, considering – our circumstances, and because – I understand that she – wishes to start again herself.” He swallows hard. It shouldn’t be this difficult; it is not as though he wants Else home, or would begrudge her this new man. But he wants the idea of her, and he wants his daughter and his life before back again, when he was happy and his house felt less like a museum of departed joy and instead held warmth and light and other people, and for all that this will never happen, the divorce does feel like the last nail in that particular coffin. He makes himself look up, and smile at their devastating pity. “So you see, I’ve no excuse not to follow her example, if only anyone would have me.”

Herr Liebermann has frozen, fork halfway to his mouth, in a way that would be comical were it not for the heartbreak of it all. “Oh,” Frau Liebermann says absently. “Oh, Oskar, I’m so sorry.”

He blinks carefully against the pinprick of that – the warmth of his given name burning chilblain hot against his huddled hurt. “Well,” he says. “It’s – I won’t deny her.”

“You never said,” Max says abruptly, brows drawn in like this is some kind of puzzle, or possibly a slight. “All day, you’ve never said a word.”

“Max, honestly,” Leah says sharply, “are you actually a psychologist or are you just pretending to be clever all the livelong day?” She doesn’t look at Oskar, just glowers over him at her brother; the sensation is alarmingly akin to being a tiny cub defended by a lioness. He busies himself with his plate in an effort to avoid the shrapnel of their bickering.

“I’m a doctor!” Max objects, rather childishly.

Leah purses her lips and raises her eyebrows in feigned curiosity. “And have you any brains, in the slightest?”

“Children,” Herr Liebermann intones at the ceiling with a voice of abject resignation, “please.”

Max and Leah settle back into their chairs with overt displays of maturity, sipping at their wine and delicately stabbing vegetables into oblivion. Oskar, trying not to smile, accidentally makes eye contact with their mother; she shakes her head. “Inspector, I do apologise; we did raise them, I promise. All that, after you-”

“No, please,” he says, a little too fast. “I’ve often wondered what Max was like as a child. It’s a pleasure.”

Max glares at him without much heat; his father laughs. “After eighteen years, the shine wore off.”

“Apologies for our dullness, father,” Max retorts dryly. “We shall endeavour to liven up dinner some other way.”

“No need,” Herr Liebermann says cheerfully; “why do you suppose we invite the Inspector?”

Oskar smiles at his plate; Leah, delightfully, laughs. “There, Inspector, you’re a more valued member of this family than any of us.”

“Don’t, you’ll make him insufferable,” Max says with feigned exhaustion and a quick grin at Oskar.

Leah hums. “Oh, I think he could bear it well enough. Unlike some people.”

“If the two of you start again I shall send you to your rooms,” Herr Liebermann says. “Oskar, have some more potatoes.”

Leah catches Max’s eye and they laugh around him, warm and delighted with themselves; Oskar reaches out of this bubble, hands careful and eyes shy, and accepts the dish from Herr Liebermann’s gentle palms. The conversation turns, away from his own personal turmoil – now lessened, however, and not so precisely painful – but he still notes, over the course of the evening, that Leah’s eyes rest more often, and more calculatingly, upon him.

“My sister wants to see you,” Max says without preamble, striding into the precinct and throwing a folded, sealed note at him. Oskar scrambles to catch it and glowers forbiddingly at Haussmann for daring to look up and interested about it.

“Come in, Max, get comfortable,” he grouses, leading them into his office.

Max hums agreement and drops his hat on the stand. “Thanks, I will.” He sits by the desk, long legs kicked out and crossed at the ankle so that Oskar has to climb over him to shut the door, but he does wait until then to elaborate. “She won’t tell me why, and our parents haven’t a clue either. Our best guess is one of her friends has committed a terrible crime and you’re her only hope of rescue without damaging any reputations. Apparently I lack subtlety.”

Oskar thinks about dangling from the Praterrad, and pretending to be a monk, and exploding a pond in front of several ambassadors. He pulls a thoughtful face, nodding; Max glares at him.

“Well, go on then,” Max says, nodding at the small piece of paper Oskar is idly turning over and over in his fingers. “What does she want?”

“If your sister won’t tell you, Max,” Oskar says, pointing the paper’s corner at him, “why should I?”

“Because,” Max says very seriously, “I am your dearest friend and her dearest brother.” Oskar waits. “And because I want to know,” Max adds, somewhat petulantly.

Oskar feels a rise of familiar fondness, which he attempts to quash without mercy. The man is so clever and peculiar and when he laughs he looks about eighteen; he can be so serious about the mind, and what it makes men do, and he teases his sister like he’d never grown up at all. He has, somewhat unfortunately, his own odd charm, and Oskar finds him frequently – and very unfortunately indeed – simply very charming.

In an effort to stem this, he looks down at the paper itself. Inspector O. Reinhardt is written in neat, decisive letters; Leah has the handwriting of a person trying very hard to be legible at speed, rather than one with any native flow. He is duly grateful for her efforts: Max’s handwriting is appalling. The seal is, he believes, her father’s, imprinted off-centre in white candlewax. The corners of the note are pulled back slightly, as though someone had been trying to peer in.

“It’s not evidence, you might just open it.”

Oskar settles his glasses on his nose and peers imperiously over them. “I thought you said this was going to be a case for me.”

Max looks unimpressed. Oskar grins.

Dear Inspector Reinhardt,

       I am writing to cordially invite you to take tea with me at the Hotel Astoria on the morning of July fifteenth, at eleven. I understand from my brother that you will not be at work at this time, though if you have any prior engagements a more convenient alternative can be found. I wish to discuss with you a matter of some delicacy and importance, and consequently am avoiding as best one can the eyes of my brother and will not write the matter here. Please however do not be alarmed; as I look back over this note it seems rather ominous. Do let me know if you can see me.

       Yours faithfully,

             Leah Liebermann

Oskar grunts thoughtfully, as much to annoy Max as from curiosity. He must admit, he is curious: the note is an odd mix of almost nervous civility and casual familiarity, and her reluctance to commit anything to paper is unusual and a little concerning. But then again, Max is hovering nearby like a dog begging for scraps of information, so perhaps this is not unwarranted. It does raise a little niggling, unnamable fear in his chest, however. He likes Leah. He hopes she is well.

He sits down at his desk, carefully angling the letter so that Max never catches a glimpse of its contents, and writes her a little note in return to say that he has no prior engagement – it’s polite of her to think he might, really – and would be honoured to take tea with her. He folds it neatly, melts the sealing wax over the oil lamp on his desk, dips his thumb in his water glass and presses the hot wax flat. His thumbprint, stark and unique, lies preserved like a fossil in amber, like the evidence he and Max hunt out. He’s not sure if she’ll like the analogy or find him tedious, a one-trick-pony, a tiresome ageing Inspector with nothing more to talk about than work. But then, the invitation. She must like him well enough.

He writes out her name on the other side and then passes it to Max with a bland smile. “Would you pass this on?”

Max looks at the note, then at Oskar again. “Are you going to tell me what’s in it?”

“The note isn’t addressed to you, now, is it?” Oskar says. “You’ll have to ask your sister.”

“Are you going to tell me what was in her note?”

He considers the truth, which is: not much. “You’ll have to ask your sister that, too,” he says.

Max looks furious. Oskar’s heart, traitorously, sings. “You’re both extremely troublesome,” he says flatly, and snatches the note from Oskar’s fingers. Oskar is delighted with himself.

The Hotel Astoria is rather nicer than the sort of place he tends to visit, but then, he very infrequently takes tea; largely, he and Max have a drink together in the evening, or he visits the Liebermanns for dinner, and once or twice he’s stopped for coffee with a neighbour. In truth, he would be out of his depth taking tea with Leah Liebermann anywhere, and he can hardly blame the fine, sweeping surroundings for any nervousness he feels.

Oskar glowers at the pink-veined marble floor and his boots upon it. They’re old, these boots, but well-maintained, since he has no other pair and striding around Vienna’s streets can be unpleasant enough without wet feet. But they’re creased and ancient and covered in the scuffs and scrapes he can’t polish out of them, and he should have – done something about them. Tried to clean them again, or bought new ones, or-

“Excuse me, sir,” the concierge says, and Oskar looks up, wrong-footed. The man has a taut set to his face and an odd tone, as though he isn’t entirely certain whether to take Oskar’s coat or ask him to use the tradesman’s entrance. “Can I help you?”

Oskar takes his hat off and holds it, worrying the brim between his fingers. “I’m here to meet someone,” he says, wincing at how much his statement sounds like a question even to his own ears. “I believe I am a little early.”

The concierge pauses, still weighing what to do with this dishevelled possible customer, but before Oskar can be seated in the hotel’s café or unceremoniously evicted, heels click behind him and Leah says “Ah, Inspector! Am I late? I do apologise.”

“Not at all,” Oskar says with a little bow – and a short, vindictive glance at the concierge. “I think we’re about to be seated.”

Leah smiles at him, genuine and – he notes – faintly nervous. “Well, by the window would be lovely, don’t you think – in that corner, there.”

The concierge bows lower and leads them along the winding way between tables to the little table for two, and Oskar takes a moment to be grateful that Leah knows her way through this world. He feels a little lost in it, himself, but he is more than content to gesture for Leah to precede him, and then to follow at the hem of her skirt. The table she has chosen is a little distance from the other diners, sheltered by a potted orange tree, and looks out across the wide, open crossroad where Führichsgasse meets the Annagasse. The Opernviertel is a little too refined for Oskar to spend very much time there, but he will concede that the fine white stone and clean, clear streets are an improvement over the shadier parts of Leopoldstadt.

Leah hums over the menu a moment and orders two black coffees and a Sachertorte before Oskar has a chance to do more than glance at the page before him. She smiles at him as the waiter vanishes, working her fine pale gloves off her fingers with little, agitated movements, and he is once again left puzzling over the contrast: she seems happy to be here, and worried about it too. “Well, Inspector,” she says, “I hope I haven’t pulled you away from anything important.”

“Not at all. Max complains things are quite dull, these days.”

“Goodness, he isn’t tired of you already, is he?” He spreads his hands helplessly, affecting mournfulness, and she grins. “I am sorry, we should have warned you how fickle he can be.”

He leans in, all feigned secrecy, and she presses in to meet him, mouth twisted against a smile. “I’ve seen him talking to other, younger detectives,” he says sombrely, and Leah gasps in delighted horror.

“The scoundrel! He should be thrown out on his ear.”

Oskar tilts his head and leans back. “I couldn’t risk my place at your father’s dinner table.”

Leah’s face shifts oddly, then: amusement, then swift on its heels hope, dread, resigned determination. He frowns, his hand shifting as though to reach out and press her arm of its own volition, and she leans back to fold her fingers together. “Inspector,” she begins, voice taut and clipped, “Oskar, I-”

The waiter appears beside them on silent feet and Leah presses her lips together in a thin, anxious line. She manages to smile up at the man as he places a coffee tray before each of them and a large wedge of Sachertorte in front of Leah, but Oskar barely spares him a glance. Her shoulders are slightly folded in and all of her looks pressed, as though constrained by some great force which keeps her small and nervous, but also holds her spine straight and her neck proud. She’s looking harried again, and he cannot for the life of him see why.

The waiter vanishes and he waits for her to speak, but Leah simply picks up the cake and places it in front of him, sliding the plate edge so that the fork sits next to his hand. He looks at it, and then at her; she shrugs. “You always have seconds when we serve it at home.”

She keeps her hands folded up near her chin, fingers occasionally tapping at her lower lip. He looks at her a moment, and then he deposits two lumps of sugar in her coffee and stirs it carefully, then adds one to his own and keeps the spoon. He slides the cake into the centre of the table and places the spare coffee spoon on her side of the plate, and then watches her closely. It’s like a dance, almost, or chess, only he doesn’t know the music and can’t distinguish the pawns from the bishops. Leah watches him back, then drops her hands and picks up the spoon.

“Thank you.”

“A pleasure.”

They pick at the cake between them for a moment; it really is delicious, and a favourite of his. How she had remembered that, he doesn’t know. Why, for another thing. They often have coffee after dinner in the Liebermann household, and Leah always takes two sugars before passing the bowl to him – but ordering for him, when she needn’t…

“I’ve been looking at new fabrics, this morning,” she says, apropos of nothing; Oskar tries to look less baffled than he is. “We start thinking about autumn and winter wools at this time, you know, for coats and suits.” Oskar nods, as though he does know, and sips his coffee. “I found one that I thought might suit you, actually,” she adds, neatly cutting a section of cake with the side of her spoon and not looking up.

Oskar stops, cup halfway to his lips. Leah goes on industriously deconstructing her side of the Sachertorte. He puts the coffee down.

“It’s quite like the coat you have now, in fact – the colouring suits you – but in good worsted wool. It ought to be warmer, and rather waterproof, too; I wouldn’t put you in a cut like Max’s, but perhaps-”

“Frau Liebermann,” Oskar manages, and Leah’s mouth closes into that thin-lipped moue. Her hands still. “I cannot – on my salary, it would be-”

“Oh, it would be a gift,” Leah says, chasing crumbs around the plate with the back of the spoon.

He gives in. “Why,” he says gently, ducking his head in an effort to meet her eyes, “would you be buying me a new coat?”

“Well, because you need one,” she says, so matter-of-factly that he can’t really be offended, “yours is a horrid old thing.” And then she stops, and puts her spoon down. “I asked you here because – because I want to ask you something.”

“If I’ll let you buy me a new coat?” he says, mostly to see if she’ll smile.

Leah huffs a laugh and closes her eyes for a moment. Then she looks up, directly at him for the first time in five minutes, and he finds himself pinned by the intensity of her gaze. “And other things, yes,” she says simply, and quite seriously. “Inspector – Oskar, I have some standing in Viennese society. I have the respect of society at large, and of my peers, and my father is leaving his business to me. But – I live with my parents, and if I were to lose them I would be alone. They know that – and they mean well – but I am not looking for another grand romance. I want only stability, and someone for my son to look to, and – well, company, I suppose. Oskar, I respect you very much. I like you. I think you could be those things for me. If we were to be married.”

He is staring at her, he knows it; he feels the impoliteness somewhere far away in his mind. No-one has ever asked to marry him before. He feels the honour of it, somewhere under the blankness of shock and terror.

“It would be an advantage to you, too,” she carries on, no longer pinning him with her gaze but settling somewhere to the left of the knot of his tie. “The circles I’m in – Papa dines with the Kommissar – and people might speak to you more easily. I would be pleased if I could help you in some way. And perhaps, you might – be pleased for the company.”

“Leah,” he says, voice like gravel, choking on the feeling of it all, “I would not be – a good-”

“Don’t say you wouldn’t be a good choice,” she says smartly, eyes flicking to his for a moment. “I know you to be a good man, and I enjoy your company.”

He spreads his hands helplessly. “I can’t give you the things you would give me. My name is nothing, less than nothing, I would be a shame to you-”

“You would be no such thing,” Leah says reaching out to briefly squeeze his fingers. Her hands are cool, a little clammy with nerves, birdlike but strong. It is, in its way, a comfort to know she is as nervous about this as he is. “I have name enough.”

“What if you were to fall in love again, someday,” he says. He is mounting this defence piece by piece as she deconstructs it, convinced that she cannot mean it; that she is making a mistake, and that it is his duty to point it out.

She raises an eyebrow. “I doubt it. Will you?”

He thinks first of Max, and feels consumingly awful about it. God above, he thinks of her brother when she asks him to marry her, he cannot – cannot -

“Your brother,” he chokes out. “He won’t-”

“He’ll have a fit,” she says calmly. “But I won’t mind. I won’t mind if you like him better than me, even; if you love him better, and differently, too.”

Oskar blinks at her; Leah smiles serenely back.

He opens his mouth and she holds up a hand. “Have you any objections other than thinking it to be a detriment to myself?”

“I’m not even Jewish,” he offers – it sounds half-hearted even to himself.

She smiles. “Well, nobody’s perfect. Oskar, I would like the company, and I think you would too. If you object to that, I’d like to know.”

He looks into the dregs of his coffee. He likes her; he has been alone for too long. He could be happier than he is; he could be better loved than he is; he could be-

He could be a father again. If Daniel would like to have one.

“I don’t,” he murmurs. “I don’t, not at all.”

Fingers reach out and wrap around his own again. “Well then. Is it so very hard to believe I think you worth it for your own company alone?”

He shrugs, eyes fixed on her pale little fingers wrapped up in his paw. “Few have, before.”

She squeezes his hand. “I do,” she says simply. When he looks up, Leah offers him a sad, sympathetic little smile. “Would you like this? Oskar, we need never speak of this again if you – if that’s what you want.”

He takes a deep breath. Thinks of what it would be to be married again; to mean something to someone, to have an ally, to sit with someone when the evening draws in. “I would. I would like this.”

She beams at him, sunshine bright. “Thank you,” she says softly, as if he is doing her some grand favour and not quite the other way around. “Would you like me to speak to my parents first?”

The terror that bolts through him must be obvious, because she creases into a startled little laugh. He carefully loosens his grip on her fingers. “Please.” It sounds a little desperate despite his best efforts.

“Alright,” she soothes, still grinning. “But you’ve nothing to fear from them. Papa will be delighted, you know he likes you best.”

“He was joking.”

Leah hums disagreement. “He likes you best.”

Oskar thinks this might be something that changes when the family friend tries to marry a man’s daughter, but he does, despite himself, feel soothed. He taps his thumb on her fingers and smiles at her gratefully. She beams back and, impulsively, he picks up her hand and brushes a kiss over her knuckles. It’s barely more than might be given to a matron at a fancy soiree, but Leah blushes slightly and rolls her eyes.

“Oh, don’t feel you have to start with all that,” she says.

“I know,” he says, because they can’t get off on the wrong foot with all this. “But. I like you too.”

Leah’s smile is soft and unexpectedly fond. “Thank you,” she says gently. “Now, eat your cake.”

Oskar takes a deep breath, and picks up his fork in his left hand. “I would, but someone appears to have taken it apart crumb by crumb,” he says, poking at the mess of chocolate and ganache on the plate.

“Oh hush, it’s not that bad,” Leah says, pressing some crumbs and ganache together into a solid, misshapen lump that she can push onto his fork.

Oskar hums, picking up the forkful to admire it in the light. “Hmm. Just as I like it,” he pronounces dryly, and she scoffs and reaches across the table to swat at his shoulder.

She doesn’t once let go of his sweaty, shaky hand.

“Sir,” Haussmann says, taking the doorway from the hall at such speed that he slides a few feet and bounces off a desk, “Doctor Liebermann is here.”

Oskar, damning and cursing himself for a fool, looks up far too fast from the report he’s discussing with a junior officer. “Well,” he says, “good.” Haussmann looks at him like he’s grown another head, and Oskar glowers at him. “He’s been here before, Haussmann, I’m not worried he’ll get lost.”

Haussmann looks faintly reproachful and trudges off to his own desk. Oskar straightens the report in his hands with a rustle and ignores the curious glance from the officer beside him. He doesn’t think Max will get lost on his way to his office, although given how long it’s been since he has stopped by, perhaps it wouldn’t be unwarranted.

Leah had been right – about her parents, and about Max. She had (rather obviously) primed both her mother and father before the four of them sat down to dinner only a few days after they had taken tea, though he doesn’t think Max had even known about the dinner let alone the topic. It could have waited until the Friday, after all. But Frau Liebermann had pressed his hand with unabashed delight when he came in, and Herr Liebermann had shown him around the library before dinner and talked to him at length about the family business, and coffee after desert had seemed to drag terribly for them all. Oskar had been terrified, but Frau Liebermann had been out of her seat and chivvying Leah almost before he’d even finished asking to speak to her father on a matter of some importance. Leah had snorted inelegantly, hand coming up far too late to hide a smile, as her mother nearly dragged her from her seat; she had looked at Oskar almost apologetically over her shoulder as they went, but he’d been too busy half-smiling in baffled, delighted panic to do anything reassuring in reply. So he’d looked at Herr Liebermann, waiting with twinkling eyes and a half-hearted attempt to hide a smile, and asked if he could marry the man’s daughter. It had been the heartiest handshake he’d ever had, accompanied even by half an embrace in the man’s enthusiasm; around the rushing of blood in his ears, he’d heard something about no-one else we’d rather have.

But Leah had presented it to Max as a done deal, so he’d never heard whether there was anyone else Max would rather have marry his sister. He also hadn’t seen Max once in the three weeks since, but he could take a hint.

And then, here he is: strolling casually through the doors, hat in hand, offering them all a bland smile. “Inspector,” he says crisply.

Oskar raises an eyebrow. “Doctor,” he retorts. “Haussmann was about to mount a rescue mission for you; he supposed you might have fallen in the Danube.”

Haussmann and Max both offer him sour looks. “You yourself were unconcerned, I presume,” Max says tartly.

Oskar waves a hand absently, keeping his eyes trained on the report in his hand. “I’m sure I would have heard of it from your parents if you had.”

The officer beside him is looking decidedly uncomfortable; Max’s face has pressed flat into an expression of fury. “May I speak with you,” Max bites out. “In your office.”

“Mm, in a moment. Let me finish this first,” he says idly, tracing his finger over a line on the page. He knows he is prodding, and that this kind of needling is likely to get him thumped at some point, but really. Max is either being childish and jealous, or he has been secretly harbouring some deep disdain for Oskar, his family, and his background, which Max thinks it intolerable to join to his own. Either idea is stupid, petty and cruel; and besides that, Max has kept him waiting three weeks, curled around an edge of hurt and unexpected loneliness. The man can wait two minutes more.

Max storms into the office and out of the corner of his eye Oskar watches him hang up his coat and hat and begin trying to read Oskar’s reports upside-down, as he always does – but now with a crackling tension from toe to tip. Oskar sighs and presses the report against his officer’s chest. “Look into it further,” he says, and turns away – to the man’s great relief.

“Max,” he says calmly as he shuts the office door behind him, “it’s been a while. Your patients have been keeping you busy?”

“Oh yes,” Max says, leaning back in his chair and entwining his fingers over his chest. “One case in particular interests me at present,” he adds, watching Oskar settle himself behind his desk like a snake waiting to strike. “It is the case of two people who, without any previous signs of inclination, get married almost immediately upon one person divorcing his previous wife. Further,” he says, speaking over Oskar’s attempt to defend himself, “they discuss it with no-one but themselves and present it to their friends and family as a fait accompli. Odd, isn’t it?”

“It is hardly that, we’re only engaged,” Oskar says. “And it has been nearly two months, and after a long – estrangement – it is not what I would call almost immediately.”

“You still didn’t tell anyone!” Max erupts forward, hissing between his teeth. “You didn’t ask for an opinion, you didn’t-”

“I asked your parents!” Oskar cuts in, helpless but to meet Max’s rage halfway. “I didn’t realise I had to ask everyone in the city for permission!”

“Traditionally the topic is raised in general society before the banns are read,” Max snaps. “People will talk more, now, they’ll bring my family name into disrepute-”

“So this is about your name,” Oskar sneers, cut deep. Secret disdain it is. “You can’t stand the idea of my ancestors tied to yours, my people; you hate what I’ll do to your family’s standing, is that it?”

Max shakes his head like a horse fighting flies. “What? No! I’d never – it’s not that at all. But it’s too fast, and people want to think the worst. They’ll say you seduced her, that there was no choice, and you-”

“I did not seduce your sister!” Oskar roars, slamming his fist on the table all baffled rage. The office outside goes very quiet, and then the murmur of voice resumes with a susurrus of whispering. Oskar takes a deep breath, looking at his fists, then looks up at Max. “Did you ask Leah about it?” he says, making an effort to be level and calm.

Max taps his long, pale fingers on the arms of his chair, chewing the inside of his lip and not looking at Oskar. “Yes,” he says eventually.

“And?”

“Apparently this is a matter of convenience and companionship,” Max says, contriving to sound highly suspicious of what is, Oskar thinks, quite a plausible reason to marry a person. “She wants to be head of her own household. She thinks Daniel needs a father.”

Oskar feels a tiny surge of private joy, at that. They’d met regularly over the past few weeks, he and Leah: to have dinner, or tea, or to walk in the park. They talk about what they’d like from the future, this one with the both of them in it. He’d managed to express something half-choked about being there, somehow, for Daniel, and she had agreed to write to the boy about it. The letter in reply had been awkward and stilted – what does a boy say, when his mother means to marry again? - but no dislike had been expressed. Daniel had sent them both his best wishes, Oskar’s name alongside Leah’s in Daniel’s schoolboy-neat hand.

“And you don’t believe her?” he says.

“Why you?” Max says. “It’s too sudden.”

Oskar spreads his hands. “Can’t I want companionship?”

“But – you can’t love her,” Max says. His voice is tightly-wound, fraying at the edges like he’s under some terrible strain; he seems helpless in the face of some great upset. “You can’t – you’ve never shown anything, you don’t behave like a person in love.”

Oskar closes his eyes on an edge of pain. He supposes it should be a relief to be so subtle, even unto the object of his wretched affection.

“And my sister should have better than a man who does not love her,” Max says firmly.

“Max,” Oskar says gently, opening his eyes, “she does not love me.” Max looks oddly reproachful, and almost frightened, and sad. Oskar supposes he must dislike change. “I do not ask her to. It is only companionship between us. Neither of us are likely to fall in love again.” Not if Max goes on being himself, charming and endearing and there, on the other side of his desk, looking lost and alone. He can hardly look anywhere else. “It’s a matter of friendship only; we are agreed on it.”

“You are agreed,” Max echoes, half a question. Oskar can’t tell if the man wants him to back out, or will black his eye if he does.

Oskar inclines his head. “We are agreed.”

Max nods sharply. “Right. What’s the case you’re working, then?”

“He’ll get over it,” Leah says, when he tells her the next day of Max’s odd, determined normality; too decisive, too brisk, too unbothered. “He used to have your undivided attention. He’s adjusting.”

He has to believe her, since she’s known him longer than almost anyone. But he fears, all the same, that he is trading one joy for another, and will never have Max as he used to have him ever again.

Clara, almost immediately upon entering the house, shakes his hand with a comforting degree of enthusiasm and more than a little solidarity. He feels, at once, the presence of an ally.

Which is not to say that he is in any danger, or even that the Liebermanns have left him to fend for himself in the crowd of their friends who have gathered to eat dainties and toast the new engagement; Max is never far, and Leah circulates like a woman on a mission, making sure that everyone can consider themselves spoken to by both halves of the happy couple. Frau Liebermann has introduced him to a terrifying array of matriarchs to be assessed as a son-in-law; in an attempt to escape unscathed, he’d offered to fetch her a drink and had felt himself rise in their collective estimations. He has also been introduced to Herr Liebermann’s associates, and their rabbi, all with Herr Liebermann’s palm heavy and warm on his shoulder.

But Clara grins at him with a degree of sympathy which he appreciates. “My congratulations, Inspector,” she says warmly.

He bows slightly over her hand. “Thank you. It was good of you to come.”

She shrugs, eyes dancing. “I think I like it better from this side. I ought to whisk Leah away on some mysterious errand, really, and leave you to it.”

Oskar’s eyes seek out Leah, smiling in a little crowd of women her age; he would guess schoolfriends, but he’s seen such a bewildering array of faces tonight that he can’t be sure. She glances up, and then looks back properly, one eyebrow raised in question. He half-smiles and nods back. Perhaps the only way to make this evening more frightening would be to remove Leah – the only person of whose belief that he should be here he can be entirely certain. “Yes,” he says stiltedly, “I am sorry for that. I would deserve it, but-”

“I won’t,” Clara says. “I wouldn’t do that to Leah.” He winces, and she lets him stew in it for a moment. Then she turns to him with a beatific smile to wipe it all away. “But I do mean for us to be friends, Inspector; I like Leah too much to give her up to a husband, so I am preparing to share.”

He inclines his head. “Most gracious,” he says, not insincerely.

“I thought so,” she says airily, turning her analytical gaze upon the room. “The Liebermanns look happy,” she notes, watching Frau Liebermann tuck herself, beaming, into her husband’s side.

“Leah supposes they were worried about her,” Oskar admits, watching the way her father’s gaze tracks Leah about the room. It is quite something, he finds, to have been so visibly entrusted with a precious person’s safety and comfort.

“People do,” Clara says easily, “when you’re alone – even if you’d rather they didn’t, and see no cause for it besides. I gather Max isn’t so happy, but then, he’s never worried about anyone else before and I hardly see him starting now.”

Oskar looks down. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he protests gently, but he feels the chastisement of it all the same. Max is all flighty intensity; he wants with the selfishness of a magpie, strutting from treasure to treasure and discarding the things he has for the newest, shiniest thing. Oskar finds himself ever fascinated, drawn in by it, following with interest from one new obsession to the next, but he has never himself been the obsession as Clara has. He is an opening, for Max, to new interests and curiosities; the cabinet, not the curio. Try as he might. Perhaps it is a kindness from Clara – barbed, hurting as it goes in and is drawn out, but kind all the same – to remind him of it; he wants too much, and he wants what he may not have. If he could only remember, perhaps he could guard himself against the hurt. He could bear anything, he thinks, but to be discarded by Max.

Clara shrugs. “Have I not earned the unfairness, a little? He ought to be happier that my dear friend, his own sister, is to be happy herself. He’s being selfish.”

“He’s – behaving, now,” Oskar corrects, which is true. Max has been nine-tenths the man he ever was, since their argument, but ever so slightly distant. They spend less time together in leisure, in a bar or at a concert, but perhaps this is all fair and due to the time spent on wedding preparations. He is a little more polite and a little less open, but perhaps he is only learning manners at last. In short, he is almost entirely himself, but slightly lacking; Oskar finds that he misses Max, contrary and sharp and charming, even as he sees him every day.

But he must remember – he wants what he cannot have.

“Well,” Clara says. “He always did more for you than he ever did for me.”

“I’m not saying you have to talk to him-”

Oskar holds up a finger. “You have said nothing else all afternoon.”

Leah waves this aside, pressing in close to fuss with his tie in what is, blatantly, an attempt to get him to stand still and be argued with. He sighs, looks away, and submits. “I am not saying it, because it ought to come from you in the first place,” she says firmly. “If you think something is wrong, you should do something about it – and soon.”

“You think something’s wrong,” he points out. “And he’s your brother.”

Leah tugs sharply on his lapel until he looks at her, her little sharp face turned up to him and set in firm annoyance. “He’s not affecting my work. Besides, he’s only odd with you.”

Oskar sighs, eyes closing. If only she were wrong; but since their marriage Max has been drifting ever further and further away from him – and him personally, since he is entirely as he ever was with Leah. He has become politely distant, worse than during the engagement, and seems to hate every reminder of the marriage. Max hasn’t visited the family home once in the month since Oskar moved in, despite repeated invitations; he won’t go anywhere if both Oskar and Leah are attending; and he seems unable to bear looking at Oskar in his new coat of fine brown wool. Which is rather a shame: the shock of its niceness had made Haussmann trip over a table, and in normal circumstances he would have liked telling Max, in wistful tones, of the look on the young man’s face. Oskar will treasure the memory all the same, and it had made Leah laugh, but it would have shone all the brighter for being shared with Max too.

Leah runs the back of her knuckles over his jaw until he opens his eyes and meets her look of sympathy with a sorry little smile. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it would help,” she says.

“You ask all sorts of me,” he protests gently, and she bites her lip against a smile.

“Didn’t you like building me a new bookshelf for the sitting room?” she teases, grinning when he huffs a put-upon laugh. He had rather enjoyed that, in truth; only, then he had wanted to tell Max, and show him the neatness of his joints, and bicker with him about whether or not it matched the existing furniture and if he’d put the shelves up straight, and Max had not been there. “Well, alright,” she allows, “but I still think I’m right.”

“Do I ever say otherwise?”

“Yes, and far more often than you’ve any right to,” she counters immediately, which makes him laugh. “I – I worry about him, really,” she says, watching her fingers as they tidy his lapels in self-soothing motions. “That I’ve stolen you from him for my own comfort, and that he won’t ever try to have you back.” Oskar frowns, ducking his head to try to catch her eye, but she presses in closer to avoid it and looks only at the suit being fidgeted in her hands. “I suppose – I worry he’s lonely, on his own. What a hypocrite I’ve become.”

He cradles her elbow in his palm, face creased with worry. What a thing to say, so solemn and matter-of-fact. “No,” he says gently, pressing her arm gently until she looks up at him under her eyelashes. She looks so weighed with it, as she hadn’t in the days immediately after the wedding. Then, she had been all vivacity, picking teasing arguments over the dinner table until her parents had thrown up their hands and gone to bed early, and dragging him to all manner of fittings and viewings for new suits and, of course, the new good coat. They’d been to parties, and concerts, and galleries; she’d introduced him to important people, and left him alone so that she could talk to her friends before orbiting back to him for a break, and they’d stood in front of enormous, slightly horrible canvases of modern art and tried to invent reasons to understand and like them, and they’d been so busy with all this that they hadn’t noticed, until they turned to the empty space where he should be to ask for his wisdom on this new art style, that Max had fallen almost entirely away from them.

“No,” he repeats, “never that. I – you miss him.”

Leah casts an assessing eye over his expression. He has no idea, truly, what she is looking for: what she expects, or wants, to find. Of course, she had given her permission for him to like her brother better, and differently – but she could hardly mean what he wanted her to. And permission, regardless, does not equal enthusiasm or approval; he cannot understand whether she looks with resignation for signs of his...preference, or with pleasure.

Whatever she finds, she only smiles rather sadly at him and reaches one hand over to squeeze his fingers where they wrap around her arm. “Promise me you’ll talk to him. I want the two of you together again, and I want him to come home.”

He finds himself nodding before he can even think about it. Of course, he wants Max back – he wants the object of his wretched affection at his side like air to breathe – but more than that, he will do it. If it makes her happy, he will do it. “Of course,” he murmurs. “Yes.”

Her parents are calling them to dinner; they must unwind from each other and go to the table and be bright, happy versions of themselves, for they are newly-weds and have no desire to see her parents worry about their worry about Max besides. But first: she squeezes his hand, and smiles, and says, “Thank you.”

He steps off the train, exhausted, and finds himself with his arms full of Leah before he has really got his feet under him. He staggers slightly, recovers, and holds her close on entirely baffled instinct; she has buried her face in his collar, and is breathing heavily, but is yet to say anything. Max, whom she appears to have outrun, appears after a moment and scrambles to a halt at their side, one hand clasping Oskar’s shoulder somewhat desperately. His eyes are wide, breath coming fast, bitten lips slightly parted.

“Oh God,” Oskar says, a pit of dread in his stomach, “what’s happened?”

Leah pulls back, ignoring his question to clasp his face between her hands and examine it minutely. “Oskar,” Max breathes, squeezing his shoulder tighter.

“Is it your parents?” Oskar asks with mounting horror. “Has something happened to them – or Daniel, is he alright? Or-”

“Oskar, we thought you’d been shot,” Leah says gently, all the worry deflating out of her; he thinks for a moment that she has shrunk without the volume of it, and then realises that she has been pressed fervently up on her tiptoes to hold him. She sweeps his hair off his forehead, stroking over his confused frown as if to verify its existence, and then smiles, taut and relieved. “A wire was sent to the station, saying there had been a confrontation with a suspect and shots fired, a narrow escape – that you would return on this train, and send word when you were able to.”

Wordlessly, Oskar turns his head. Six feet to his right and, as expected, looking rather like he wishes the floor would open and swallow him whole, Haussmann is intently watching the progression of his own shoe as he toes uncertainly at the join between flagstones, hands tucked innocently behind his back. He doesn’t look up in the heavy silence, but he does turn an uncomfortable shade of red.

Oskar sighs.

“I told him,” he explains, first to Leah, and then to Max, who is still holding his arm like he might yet pass over if Max doesn’t keep him securely on this side of the veil, “to wire to say we’d got our man, and that I would send word when I was able to put down the paperwork. We will be having words about dramatisation,” he adds sharply in Haussmann’s direction; the man flinches gratifyingly.

Leah huffs half a laugh, almost against her will, and settles into his arm; it makes space for Max to step almost imperceptibly closer, and frees Oskar’s arm to reach back and settle his own hand, broad and steadying, over Max’s shoulder. Max leans, just a little, into the contact, and Oskar’s heart sings quietly to itself.

“Was there really a gunfight, then?” Max says, voice almost entirely resettled into his usual dry disinterest – but not quite.

Oskar squeezes his shoulder. “The man shot in my direction, once,” he says, maintaining a steady, even tone. “It went very wide; I was in no danger.”

Leah sighs, and rests her head briefly on his shoulder. “That’s a relief,” she says, matter-of-factly – and for all that he knows they were worried and are now relieved by the way they are acting, it still sets a pleased glow all through him to hear it said. Too many times, he has escaped with his life clutched tightly in his hands, and returned at the end of the day to an empty home with no-one in it to be glad of him but himself.

Max squeezes his arm rather urgently, and is looking rather dismayed when Oskar looks up at him; so he schools his expression into something a little less surprised and shakes Max’s shoulder in reply. He would quite like to take Max into his arms to hold as he has Leah – but they are in public, still standing beside Haussmann in the bustling central station, and how is he to know if Max would like such a thing anyway. He should be grateful for what he has, this handful of the man, for that is all that he can reach.

“There was talk of a pursuit on horseback, too – were you really riding through the forests like a gallant knight of old?” Leah teases lightly, eyes sparkling.

He winces, body lighting up with the various aches and pains which he had, in the excitement of terror at Max and Leah’s own fear, entirely forgotten. He’s not a confident rider; the gallop through the trees had mostly involved keeping the suspect between the sights of the horse’s ears, ducking his head against the whips of low leaves and branches, and clinging on for dear life. “The horse did the hard work,” he demurs, and Max laughs, rubbing the back of his hand over his own brow.

“Come on then,” Leah says, pulling out of his hold and immediately tucking her hand back into his arm. “Dinner for the returning hero at home, I think.”

Oskar pulls a face. “I ought to finish the case up-”

“Surely Haussmann can manage it,” Max says, retracting his hand from Oskar’s arm and stowing it forcefully in his pocket as though worried it might escape of its own accord. “Without too much invention, if possible.”

Haussmann looks vaguely reproachful, but offers no excuses or refusals. Oskar sighs. “Alright. Haussmann, get the man processed and start the report – leave it on my desk to look over. Then get off home yourself.”

“Sir,” Haussmann says with a nod, and carries himself self-importantly off to administer mild chaos to the other end of the station where the local officers they had co-opted from the village are competing for importance with the city boys instead of properly handing over the suspect, and-

Leah reaches up and pushes gently on his jaw, turning his face away. “Stop that at once,” she says, amused, and Max grins when Oskar puts up his spare hand in concession. “Gentlemen – let’s go home.”

Her parents are holidaying in the mountains; she has taken herself to bed early, citing the excitement of the day, and left them to their after-dinner drinks. She means for them to talk, he knows it. Perhaps more; like an indulgent chaperone, she has made a point of how quiet the house is this evening with only the three of them in it, how tired she is, how deeply she thinks she will sleep.

And now they are sitting, either side of the fire, good cut glasses in hand. The liquor is strong, clean and thin as he rolls it around his tongue, and he watches the fire licking equally clean and hungry at the grate. He watches Max’s ankles, stretched out and crossed lazily, the ball of the delicate joint sharp, fragile, exposed. Shifting slightly, making a lie of his relaxed pose. He, himself, cannot stop running the edge of his nail over the pad of his thumb, over and over, a fidgeting motion where his hand rests on his thigh.

“I should have been with you, today,” Max says, without warning. He sounds solemn, sad; resigned to his failure on this part. “That was all I could think, when we heard – if only I had been there.”

“I was in no danger,” Oskar soothes, only mostly true.

“You could have been,” Max objects, rather fairly. “I should have been there, I should-”

“-have been in danger with me?” Oskar suggests, leaning forward to meet Max’s eyes. They look hollow, echoing; like Max has gone somewhere deep within them, and is feeling his way home. “You know – you know I don’t want that.”

“I could have helped,” Max begs, “I could have – I don’t know, but to be there – Oskar, please. Please, I should have been there.”

Oskar closes his eyes carefully, then reopens them. Bares his heart gently, trying not to hurt. “I would not have stopped you, if you had asked to come.”

Max winces all the same. “I know. I know, I’m sorry, it’s my fault; I was selfish, childish, and it’s my fault, but-”

Oskar reaches out, all instinct. “It’s not your fault,” he says, Max’s hands clasped in his own, “that I was in danger. This is no fault of yours.”

Max shuts his eyes, but doesn’t pull away. “You said you weren’t in danger,” he says petulantly; Oskar squeezes his fingers until he opens his eyes. “It’s my fault I wasn’t with you,” Max says quietly. “Because I couldn’t bear it. That Leah – Leah could have you, and she does not even love you. It isn’t fair.”

Oskar takes a sharp breath in, tapping his index finger repeatedly against Max’s knuckle. He can’t stop it – can’t believe, can’t think through the flash-bang bright shock of it, the beautiful terror of having what you want handed over.

But Max sees it, and starts pulling away. “You – I’ve – I’m sorry, I’ll-”

Oskar grips tighter, pulls his hands closer until they are both leaning forward in their chairs and their hands are white, wrapped in each other. “No, I – please stay,” he breathes. Max’s eyes are wide, but his own again; his mouth is parted in surprise, and so close that Oskar can feel his breath on his cheek. “Please, be with me, I love you,” he says, surprisingly steady but altogether too fast, and Max laughs like he might cry.

“You-?” he manages, lifting a hand like he had meant to touch Oskar’s face – but upon finding his fingers tightly intertwined with Oskar’s, he instead presses Oskar’s knuckles to his mouth.

“Oh, forever now,” Oskar says, startled into honesty at the feel of lips on his skin. “You’re so clever, so full of rubbish about seeing hidden truths and desires-” Max’s lips curve into a bright grin against his skin, “-how could you not know?”

“I wanted – I wanted too much, I could hardly be trusted,” Max murmurs. “Love makes us blind, doesn’t it? And – you were marrying Leah, I thought I was the worst sort of man to even think it.”

“She suggested it,” Oskar offers. “When she first asked. I didn’t know how to tell you, if you would even want to know. You pulled away so quickly, I thought I’d lost you at once.”

“She never said a word to me,” Max complains. “How was I to know?”

By listening to her, Oskar suspects, but he only smiles. “I see we’ve both expected too much insight of you,” he coos indulgently, “observant and a psychiatrist though you are-”

“Oh hush,” Max says, all feigned crossness as Oskar starts to laugh, and kisses him.

Leah is at breakfast before him. She usually is – he likes to wring the last drops of night out of the morning and then hurry to work, and she prefers an early, leisurely start – but he usually has warning of it when he wakes to an empty bed.

He hadn’t, this morning.

She smiles brightly at him, spreading butter on toast thinner than she likes it – but then she places the toast on his plate as he settles opposite her. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” He pours her coffee, adds her sugar, and hands it over in return for the apricot jam. “Did you sleep well?”

“Very, thank you. The night seemed quieter than usual.” He glowers at her – he does not snore, the fact is well-known, and she disagrees to spite him, he’s sure of it – and she compresses her lips against a smile which spills out at the edges anyway, all charm.

They sit together in quiet co-existence, sharing breakfast and coffee in peace. It’s still a little dark, the dawn lingering and reluctant to stretch into the room, but for that it seems like a gentler morning, soft in its edges and focus. The house is still, calm, entirely unruffled by the domestic rearrangement that had gone on the night before. Nothing has changed between him and her; it strikes him, suddenly, that he doesn’t think anything will. That she is entirely content to eat breakfast with him, and walk at his elbow, and orbit parties to return to his side, and then to send him to bed with her brother. In fact, she is content to do all of those things with Max there too. She will not ask him to choose. She is happy, and so is he.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, serving them both thin slices of cheese and apple, “that – though this is a very fine house – it’s been rather nice to be in it without my parents, and that I should quite like us to have a house of our own. The lease on Max’s flat is coming up soon, too, and I thought it might be nice if he came to live with us too. If you could bear to see so much of him, of course,” she adds, trying ever so hard to say so without smiling.

“I imagine I could bear the strain,” he replies, equally solemn, and she bursts out laughing.

“Alright, I’ll start looking for somewhere. Not far from here, I think; for your work, and Papa’s business. A good study, so you can build me more bookshelves-” he huffs and she beams, “-and I’ll talk to Max about what he wants to do about consultations. And we’ll need enough space: a bedroom for one, and a bedroom for two.”

She looks at him, her question unspoken. He nods, and she nods to herself, satisfied. “And – and one more bedroom,” he says, throat unexpectedly dry, and she raises an eyebrow. “Another one for Daniel, when he comes home from school.”

For a moment, he thinks she has changed her mind since they talked of Daniel first; that this new arrangement is a step too far; after all, she had not brought it up in the new house. But then she smiles, wobbly and her eyes a little wet, but wholly and genuinely delighted, and she nods. Her back straightens, confident and content, and she looks for a moment a little larger than life. As far from harried and small as a person could be.

“Yes,” she says. “And one for our son. Thank you.”

Oskar reaches across to her and Leah reaches back, hands joining in the middle like an agreement sealed, as the bright, steady orange of the dawn spreads slowly, carefully, down the table between them.