The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood
The second time, a collection of essays by a writer I’d mentioned once, in passing, weeks ago, during one of our midnight conversations in the kitchen, I started paying closer attention.
By the fourth book I’d stopped pretending it was coincidence.
The coffee was harder to explain away too. I’d never told anyone exactly how I liked it, not the temperature, not the exact way I let it cool slightly before drinking because I’d burned my tongue too many times as a teenager to trust anything served too hot. But it arrived that way every morning now, already cooled to precisely the point I preferred, without me ever having said a word about it to anyone in this house.
“Did you say something to Hel