But like the rest of the family, Aurora wasn't at her best today. Attie understood. The house was too hushed, with every sound causing an unearthly echo she would swear had never occurred before. Everyone moved slowly and wearily and far too carefully, strange in a house that had only known heedless, boisterous action for as long as Attie could recall.

Even the tiniest Worthington recognized the discordance. There were some things that only the warm arms of your family could fix, so Attie had swaddled her stout little niece in a cozy shawl and taken her for a long, long walk in the hall.

Aurora made a creaking noise, long and slow like a door with sticky hinges. Attie nodded. "Yes, Aurora. I comprehend."

Attie wouldn't be able to maintain this peace much longer. Aurora was hungry. Since she was still vociferously opposed to solid food, she would be needing her mother quite soon.

Attie eased her embrace to study her niece's blue-green eyes and furrowed, barely-there brows. "Matters certainly would be simpler if you would eat some porridge. Although, I do not blame you for your low opinion of porridge. I commiserate wholeheartedly." Worthingtons didn't use infant speech. That sort of thing was for Other People.

However, Attie's sister-in-law Miranda had been up all night with Attie's mother, Iris Worthington.

Sometimes sharp but mostly dreamy and abstracted, Iris was more beloved family pet than a true maternal figure. Too absentminded and artistic to handle the fundamentals of the real world, Iris was happily kept in abundant paints and long trailing scarves and never permitted to handle money or order cabbages from the grocer.

Of course, that was before.

Attie allowed her thoughts to veer away from the uneasy topic of her mother and return to contemplating the clock standing tall at the far end of the hall. Miranda had only been asleep for a few hours. Attie wanted to keep Aurora soothed a little while longer.

The creaky complaint began to rise in volume. Attie gently jiggled her niece and kissed her silky red-haired crown. "Don't wake everyone, Ginger-biscuit. It isn't as though anyone would actually let you starve."

Attie turned and began to walk toward her brother's suite of rooms. When Miranda had married Cas, instead of Poll, his twin whom she'd been fond of first, Cas and Miranda decided to remain in Worthington House.

Poll had been upset at the loss of Miranda, and in many ways the loss of Cas as well. He'd decided to remove himself from a situation too hurtful and confusing to bear. So Poll took off gallivanting.

At one time, Attie had liked the word "gallivanting." Now she despised it. People who had a family who missed them should never gallivant. It shouldn't be allowed.