They gave him an hour first.
That was Thomas's doing — Thomas who understood, better than most, the specific cost of arriving somewhere after a long absence and being expected to give everything immediately. He said eat something, rest, and then we'll talk, and he said it in the voice that was not a suggestion, and Emmet ate and rested and did not argue, which told Katherine something about what the last however-long had cost him and how much of what he had left he was conserving.
Carlyle did not leave his side.
He sat in the kitchen while Emmet ate and did not say much and did not need to, the twin bond humming with the particular quality of someone who had been handed back something they had given up on being handed back and was holding it very carefully, the way you held something you were afraid to drop.
Tierney was in the kitchen too.
She sat across the table from Emmet and drank her tea and looked at him the way she looked at things she was memorizing — cataloguing, storing, the particular green-eyed attention of a woman who had learned not to take the presence of the people she loved for granted because she knew better than most exactly what their absence felt like.
Emmet looked up from his food once and found her watching and said nothing.
Tierney said nothing either.
They had always been able to do that — say the full thing in the quiet between words, the particular fluency of people who had known each other long enough that the words were optional.
After the hour Thomas came to the kitchen doorway and looked at Emmet.
"Ready," Thomas said.
Emmet looked at his hands.
"Yes," he said.