Cole comes home forty minutes later. His keys hit the bowl by the door, metal clattering once against ceramic. His backpack lands on the couch. A pause follows, then the office door creaks.
"Was someone here?" he calls from the hallway. "The printer's warm."
"Maya. She used the printer."
He walks into the kitchen. His gaze moves across the counter, over the mug and the tea box. After a beat, he picks up the box and turns it in his hands.
"Barry's Irish Breakfast," he says.
"It was on the shelf."
He glances at me. "It wasn't on the shelf this morning."
I close my laptop. The lid clicks shut.
Cole sets the box back down on the counter. He looks at the mug with one sip gone, then he looks at me.
"How was Marco?" he asks.
"Fine. Family stuff."
He nods once and opens the fridge. Cold light spills across the floor. Containers shift as he moves them aside. He pulls one out, shuts the door with his hip, slides the food into a pan, and turns on the burner. The oil pops softly.
His hands move through the routine, steady, the spatula turning the food while the Barry's box sits four feet away on the counter. The scrape of the pan, the low burner, the cabinet closing under his hand fill the room.
Once the food is plated, he sets one in front of me. Then he sits across the table with his own.
"The profile runs Thursday," I say. "She found something in the neutral zone reads that could give opposing teams an advantage. I told her."
Cole lifts his fork. "You told her not to run her own story?"
"I told her the data had tactical implications."
"And she said?"
"She didn't agree."
Cole chews and swallows. "She wouldn't." He takes another bite. "You bought her tea."
"I bought tea."
"Dante."
The fork sits loose in his hand.
"You bought Maya's specific tea brand," he says, "and put it in our kitchen."
I eat the food he made me and keep my eyes on the plate.
Cole watches me from across the table. His jaw sets. Flat-eyed, he stops his fork halfway to his mouth for half a second before he forces the motion to finish. His knuckles go white around the fork, the tendons in his wrist rigid under the skin.
"Okay," he says.
He goes back to eating. The word lands and stays there.
Quiet settles over the kitchen. The mug with one sip gone waits on the counter, the Barry's box beside it.
Upstairs, in my desk drawer, the recorder sits next to the draft preparation folder. Her voice is on it. Mine is too.
