Choking On Sapphires

32 Growing On Me

He's come home to an eerily silent house. No one answers him at the door, and he sees no one on the way to his room. As he's changed into something more comfortable and made his way cautiously around the house, subconsciously heading straight for your room, turning swiftly as he hears a noise from the kitchen.

He pads down the dim back hallways of the house that connect almost all the rooms. He hears you and exhales noisily, putting his gun into the back of his trousers. He moves towards the sound of you talking to yourself as you're leaning over slightly, hands on your knees, looking into the oven window. You have a lovely flowing blue dress on, your hair pulled back messily, bits loose and pieces fall in no certain order.

"Where is everyone?" you hear Alfie call from the other side of the kitchen.

"It's a summer day off I give the house staff before my birthday." you explain, turning to face him, showing a smudged apron and a flushed face.

"What do ya do that for?" he asks, chin moving up as he approaches you, hand on the large wooden butcher block top of the island in the center of the kitchen.

"Well it's very stressful on them. The planning, the cleaning up, tending to guests. It can get a bit wild so some can come upon uncomfortable situations and I like my people happy so I give them time off before and after the party." you explain, laying your pot holders to the surface his hand rested on.

"Well that's nice of ya innit?" he asks rhetorically, looking into the oven behidn you. "What ya got in there?" he asks, head nodding towards the dish.

"Dinner." you say with a chuckle. "Hopefully. It's been well over ten years since I've made it." you say with an uneasy smile and a shrug.

"Well what is it?" he clarifies.

"A Potato Kugel." you say, moving with him as he walks towards the oven.

"What ya makin' a Kugel for luv?" he says with a surprised look on his face.

You turn to sit on a stool by the counter. "Well Aggie reminded me it was the anniversary of Ida's death and got me feeling all nostalgic." you say with sweet inflection to your voice.

"Who's Ida?" he asks, turning to you, hands in his pockets.

"She was the nurse I had from before I even born." your lashes flutter, your eyes moving around the room in memory.

"Has Agatha not been with ya that long?"

"She worked in the same home, but she wasn't my personally assigned nurse." you explain.

"Personally assigned nurse. I forget how posh your upbringing was sometimes." he admits with a small half smile and a quick tilt of his head.

"Hush." you say with a chuckle.

"Was this something Ida made?"

"Yes. I loved it when I was younger. She'd made me one special sometimes." he adores the girlish smile that comes across your face as a good memory dances behind your eyes.

"Was Ida one of mine?" he asks, turning his eyes back to the oven for a moment.

"Yeah." you laugh, finding the way he asked his questions very entertaining from time to time. "I don't know much beyond her being Russian and Jewish though." you admit with a furrowed brow.

"Oi, she was like me 'en wunnit she?" he lets out a surprisingly loud laugh.

"Are you Russian?" you ask, your surprise clear in your high pitched voice.

He grins at your big eyes and open mouth. "Me mother was." he says with a nod.

"Well that's a bit of serendipity isn't it?" you say with a childlike wonderment on your face. "That's lovely." you say with a very charming smile, kicking your feet as they don't touch the floor in the high chair.