Regina was muttering to herself. Sarah was talking with her mouth half-full of food. Ava was sipping her coffee and looking bored. This was the scene that Paul walked in on and it was perfectly familiar, the same sort of thing you’d witness walking into the Delaney kitchen on any Saturday morning, though sometimes George would be sneering instead of glaring, Regina would be screaming rather than muttering, Sarah would be talking with her mouth entirely full rather than half-full, and Ava would be looking distracted rather than bored, which was the subtlest of differences. He was still half-asleep and groggy, his exhaustion like a fog in his brain, and when he came into the room he did not see, at first, what was different about the scene, what was anything but familiar. It wasn’t until he had blinked a few times that he realized that Ava didn’t look bored at all, but rather uneasy. It was only after he had rubbed some of the sleep from his eyes that he saw that Sarah wasn’t talking with food in her mouth, but rather laughing.
