She sets the tray down with her usual precision. No wasted movement. No unnecessary sound. The china touches wood like it’s been negotiated into silence.
“You look pale,” she remarks.
“I’m Irish.”
“You look paler than professionally required.”
“How observant.”
“Yes.”
I reach for the coffee because pride is a disease and I have an advanced case. The cup is warm against my fingers. Familiar. Predictable. I lift it halfway.
The smell rises. My body refuses. Not gently. A hard, immediate recoil that starts somewhere behind my ribs and moves outward like a door slamming shut.
I set it back down before my hand can shake. Teresa watches the movement. Her eyes flick once to the cup, then back to my face.
“I can bring tea,” she offers.
“I’m not ill.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it with your eyebrows.”
“My eyebrows have worked in this house longer than you.”
“That explains their confidence.”
Her mouth almost moves. Almost. Then she lifts the coffee from the tray without asking and replaces it with dry toast.
Dry. Toast. A food for invalids and people being punished by the English.
I look at it. “How generous.”
“Eat.”
“I miss when people pretended I had choices.”
“No, you don’t.”
Annoying woman.
Accurate woman.
She leaves without waiting for further commentary, closing the door behind her with the same quiet finality she applies to everything else. I wait until the latch clicks before I press two fingers beneath my ribs and breathe through the sudden, humiliating revolt of my stomach.
It comes in waves. Not nausea exactly. Something sharper. More deliberate. Like my body has identified a threat and is preparing to remove it by any means necessary.
It passes. Mostly.
I sit. Stare at the toast. Then at the space where the coffee used to be.
No.
Absolutely not.
I eat the toast in three precise bites because Teresa will notice any crumb and use it as evidence.
