She'd already forgotten what it could feel like to wake up next to another person, for the first thing she recognized as she slowly regained consciousness to be the softness of someone's breathing nearby. A warm, steady weight at her side.

Amelia's fingers drifted along the sheets that didn't belong to her, the clothes that weren't her own. She gradually turned her face towards him and opened her eyes.

Henry was still asleep. He looked—well, angelic probably wasn't the word. Angels probably didn't sleep with their cheeks slightly smushed against their pillow, lips parted, hair sticking in a confounding number of directions. A tiny spot of something that may or may not have been drool near the corner of their mouth. But he seemed so relaxed in his sleep that it made her start to smile, relieved that he was getting some rest.

Her dilemma now was not wanting to disturb him. She probably could have stayed there and watched him for hours, but he probably wouldn't have wanted to be stared at for an extended period of time, and she worried that if she remained there in bed with him she might get restless and start stirring too much. So Amelia extracted herself from the blankets as quietly as possible—her legs had gotten rather tangled up in one of them, so she hoped she hadn't managed to completely yank it away from him while they were asleep—looked at him one last time, and snuck slowly out of the room.

She wasn't sure how she wanted to fill the time before he woke up considering that she didn't actually know how much time there'd actually be to fill, but it occurred to her as her feet touched the cool floor at the bottom of the stairs that the polite thing to do would probably be to go make the guest bed that she'd slept in for the first part of the night.

The hinges of the door whined as she pushed it open, then stood there for a moment to watch the light stream in through the window. The room felt different to her in the daytime, placid and insignificant. The only part of it that looked disrupted was the bed, with its blankets crumpled and pulled back. Amelia tucked them back up towards the pillows and smoothed them out with her hands as well as she could.

In the corner of the room was a bookshelf that she hadn't given any mind to before—she hadn't precisely been in the mood for reading last night—but now it lit a spark of curiosity. One could learn quite a lot about what went through someone else's mind by looking at their books

She had to tilt her chin up just a smidge to read the titles on the top shelf. The bulk of them seemed educational—there were a couple on ASL, an Italian-English dictionary, some pharmaceutical and anatomy-related ones for his schooling. Lower down she spotted some familiar mysteries, some memoirs.

Carefully, she removed the first of the ASL books from its perch. The cover was slightly dusty from lack of recent use; she brushed it off and sat down on the bed with it.

The first spread of pages past the table of contents was predictably dedicated to the alphabet. Amelia lifted her hand and attempted to sign her own name, which came more easily than she expected as she quickly realized that the signs for A, M, and E were all quite similar. She tried out Amelia a couple of times and then Amelia Allen, which was hardly any more difficult since N was the only new letter not to appear in her first name. It was during her first go at Amelia Rose Allen that she realized that she'd actually been signing her E's like S's.

She'd become so concentrated on perfecting her name that she didn't notice Henry come down the stairs until he was lightly tapping on the open door to announce himself. Her gaze shot up from the pages, then flickered back to glance at them momentarily.

H-I, she attempted to sign.

The corners of his mouth edged up into a small, almost conspiratorial smile. He returned her gesture with one that looked similar to a salute, only his palm was facing outwards toward her.

"Is that the actual sign for hi?" she asked.

"You're a quick learner," he grinned, lowering himself onto the mattress next to her. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long," she assured him. "Just long enough to start snooping through your stuff."

"You're more than welcome to borrow anything you want. Just maybe tell me so that I don't go insane thinking I managed to misplace it."

She stifled a small giggle as her eyes drifted back to the pages of the book in front of her. "Do you know ASL?"

"Not nearly as much as I feel like I should," he admitted. "Same with Italian. I think my dad wanted to start teaching it to me as early as he could, but sitting a toddler down on a regular basis for language lessons is a lot easier in theory than in reality."

"Makes sense."

"And with my mom not being fluent, the only times I could ever really hear him having a conversation in it were on occasion with my aunt, but it's not like the two of them have a tendency to just ramble off in Italian in front of the rest of us."

"I don't know," Amelia grinned. "If I had a sibling and we were the only two people in a room who spoke a language, I'd probably find a way to take advantage of it."

A laugh bubbled out of Henry, and the sound was a relief after how worn down he'd been when they talked in the night. "Fair enough. I suppose they grew out of a lot of their mischief before they even moved over here, and the rest of their family is still back in Italy. We try to make it over there to visit them every few years, but it still doesn't feel like often enough."

"Do you have any plans to go back again sometime?"

A small sigh slid out through his lips. "Well, the original plan we made was to go around New Year's," he explained. "But that was before everything, so it's kind of up in the air right now. It feels wrong for all of us to leave without Lily and I'd be nervous about doing it and then missing more news about her, you know? But I'm sure my dad and Aunt Teresa both are probably missing their parents a lot right now. So it might be that they go and the rest of us hang behind, I don't know."

Amelia gently closed the book, running her palm over its smooth cover. "I've always wanted to see Italy," she told him. "But I can see how going that far away would be a really hard decision to make right now."

"It is," Henry nodded, brushing his thumb along her hand. "But if I do end up going, you're welcome to join me if you can."

She couldn't stop her eyebrows from shooting up. "Taking me to another continent to meet your grandparents feels very serious."

He gave her an innocent smile. "And would it be such a bad thing if I'm serious about you?"

She sheepishly shook her head no, a faint blush rising to her cheeks even though there was definitely nothing to be embarrassed about. He leaned over and pressed a swift kiss onto her temple, and her skin felt even warmer once he had.

"No pressure," he promised. "Like I said, I don't even know if me going is a sure thing. But if you really are interested in going, it's definitely way less complicated when you have a couple of people around who can speak the language."

"I appreciate the invitation, but I somehow don't suspect you've actually talked about this idea with anyone else."

Henry had no problem admitting the truth. "Well, no. But my parents think you're great, and I'm sure Liam would appreciate the company a lot. He was meant to come too, but I don't know if he'd be able to bring himself to go on a trip with her entire family. I don't know for sure if having someone else around would help lessen the sting or not, but perhaps it would."

She imagined Liam must have felt so lonely, likely wondering how he was meant to balance not wanting to cut Lily's family out of his life while he still cared about them and there were so many unknowns regarding her with the fact that he didn't want to be constantly reminded of her either. If he went on this trip with her family and she wasn't there, he'd be the obvious outsider.

"Keep me updated on the plans," Amelia told Henry. "And I'll try to be there."

"Thanks," he murmured. "It'd mean a lot—to all of us."

He would also be in need of a distraction from Lily's absence. Showing Amelia around the country would probably make for a decent distraction. She knew that she was obviously much more to him than that, but she didn't mind being one either. Not when there were so many moments when she needed him to be that for her.

She leaned over and gave him a kiss, focusing on the taste of his lips and the soft feeling of his skin under her hands, the texture of his hair. His thin, nimble fingers eased up her arm to cover her hand with his own.

"Speaking of plans," she thought aloud once she'd drawn back enough to see his face. "What are yours for today?"

He considered it for a brief moment, his expression sobering. "Now that I have this letter, I imagine that the family is going to get together to go around in circles about what we think we should do about it. I'm not gonna subject you to that."

She would have been more than willing to go support him, of course, but she suspected that he'd be more embarrassed than comforted by her watching them yell at each other.

So instead, she suggested, "Are you hungry? I could go fetch us breakfast if you need to go ahead and deal with that."

He hesitated. "...Would that be a lot of trouble? I feel a little guilty that I'm not already making you breakfast right now, but Sunday's normally my grocery shopping day."

"Of course not." It was exactly what she'd probably be doing right now if she was by herself anyhow. "What sounds good to you?"

It turned out that when he really wanted to be, Henry could be just as indecisive as Amelia often was.

He had no specific preferences about breakfast—or perhaps he just didn't want to accidentally override whatever ideas she might have had, which were unfortunately none—so even by the time she had pulled her own clothes back on and they were walking out the door so he could drive her back to her car, she still wasn't sure what her plan was.

They let quiet music fill the silence in the car instead of their own voices, both of them worn out from all of the emotional highs and lows they'd experienced just in the past twelve hours, Henry likely dreading the moment when he handed Lily's parents the letter he'd received. Meanwhile, Amelia's mind was on food as she devised a plan to acquire breakfast for them. She didn't really want fast food, but she didn't really want anything that she was going to have to wait a while for, either. There were a few coffee shops she liked all within a couple of blocks of each other, so she was thinking she'd just drive over there and see which one had the least atrocious line at the register.

She gave Henry a kiss and a reassuring hand squeeze before she got out of his car and into her own. Now that Halloween was officially over, she was tempted to lift her mood with a little bit of Christmas music on the way to the coffee shop. She didn't particularly want to be replaying her drive back from the police station in her mind, so if playing holiday music aggressively early was what it took to stop her from concentrating on that then so be it.

She found parking as close as she could to her favorite of the three coffee shops (the coffee and food were both good, but the real reason she was most biased towards it was that it also happened to be connected to a bookstore) and crossed her fingers that dozens of other people wouldn't have also had the same idea to show up at the same time as her. She at least didn't see any line coming out the door, so that was an optimistic sign.

She was greeted with the warm, smoky scent of freshly ground coffee and the buttery smell of fresh-out-of-the-oven pastries as she pulled open the door by its metal handle, a small bell chiming to indicate her arrival. There were a handful of people waiting to pick up to-go drinks but not too many in line in front of her to order. The main seating area of the cafe was through an archway into another room, but it seemed decently crowded based on the volume of chatter she could hear. Beneath that, the pleasant, melodious tinkering of piano keys—they were known to occasionally have live music during their busiest hours on the weekends.

At the counter, she ordered two americanos, a cinnamon bagel with cream cheese for herself, and a sausage croissant for Henry. Rather than wait on her order in the small front room where the crowd was just large enough to make her feel claustrophobic, she figured she might as well take a seat and enjoy the music while she waited for their food to be ready.

So once she was handed a receipt with an order number printed at the top, Amelia made her way to the back room and found an open seat in a corner next to the windows. Now that she could hear the music more clearly, she realized that the pianist was really quite talented. His playing sounded effortful and effortless at the same time, the calm sequence of notes placating something stormy inside of her that needed to be soothed. The melody was haunting and a bit sad, but also lovely, like the faint memory of something beautiful that now was gone.

The man at the piano seemed to treat the instrument gently, contemplative, so Amelia somehow wasn't entirely surprised when she finally glanced over to see his face and processed that it was Liam.

Had he mentioned that he played piano? She couldn't recall, and she certainly had no recollection of him mentioning that he ever did it outside of the confines of his apartment, but the tip jar that sat atop the piano was mostly full.

He clearly didn't need an extra tip from Amelia, but that didn't stop her from pulling her wallet back out to check if she had any cash. She smiled to herself when she found a five dollar bill, not even minding that she might be forfeiting her nice table by the window if she got up.

He instinctively glanced up for a fraction of a second when he saw someone approach to put money in the tip jar, and though the corners of his mouth quirked up a little bit when he realized it was her, he didn't seem to miss a beat.

At the end of the song, one of the baristas—a shift manager, maybe—came over to hand him a cup of coffee and talk to him for a moment; Amelia got the impression that Liam was about to take a quick break. Her suspicion was confirmed when he got up and walked in her direction, and she happily waved him over.

"I appreciate your donation to the noble cause of bolstering my bank account," he told her as he sat down.

"You didn't tell me you're a musical genius," she sulked but smiled even as she did.

"I'd hardly call it that." He lifted his cup to his lips for a quick sip. "I just tortured myself by doing a music minor in college."

She would have loved to stay there and have a pleasant chit-chat with him until her order was ready, but she wasn't sure how soon that would be or when he'd go back to the piano, so she hesitantly asked the more important question on her mind.

"Did Henry happen to call you last night or this morning?"

Liam nodded grimly. "Yeah—I take it you already know he's gonna go talk to his family?"

"Yeah," she echoed. "I'm on breakfast duty while he does that."

"I felt like I should go have my say in whatever it is they're even arguing about," he admitted. "But I just...I didn't think I could handle it right now. And now I'm wondering if that makes me a terrible boyfriend or if I even am a boyfriend anymore and—I don't know. I'd already agreed to come and play and it felt like the only thing that could make me feel a little more sane today."

"You're not terrible at all," she said quietly. "You chose to take care of yourself. You can't blame yourself for needing to take a step back and breathe."

Liam hardly looked convinced, though she could see that he was really trying to be.

"Between you and me," she added, lowering her voice even more. Even though no one around them would be paying any attention to their conversation, this still didn't exactly feel like casual coffee shop talk. "Henry kind of hit that breaking point last night and it...well, it sucked for both of us."

Liam's eyebrows furrowed. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I am," she told him softly. "Thanks. We talked about it and I think it was a productive conversation. I'm only bringing it up to point out that you'd probably be going through it too if you forced yourself to go talk to her parents right now."

After a thoughtful moment, he nodded. "Thanks for saying that. I...yeah, I wouldn't want to inadvertently just end up making myself or someone else feel worse."

"Of course. How much longer are you playing for?"

"Just a few more songs, I think," he explained. "But it's a pretty nice deal to do this every once in a while, getting free coffee and tips and all of that."

"You should tell me next time you're coming," she nudged him. "I'd love to hear your whole set."

He gave her a gentle, almost bashful smile. "Alright, maybe I will."

Once she made it back to her car, precariously gripping onto the two drinks with one hand while the other held the bag of food and her keys, Amelia texted Henry to figure out where he actually was.

Henry is typing...

Just here at my parents' house, aunt and uncle are running a little late but they'll be here in half an hour or so

Ok I think I'm only like 10 minutes away

If her calculations were correct, Henry would still have some time to enjoy his breakfast before Lily's parents showed up wanting to talk. After double-checking that she did actually know how to get to his parents' house from where she was now, she switched back over to her Christmas playlist and put the car in reverse.

Dead leaves crunched under her tires as she pulled up to the curb in front of the house, and as she was forced to revisit the task of carrying their breakfast without dropping any of it, Amelia was thinking that she really ought to have asked for a drink holder back at the coffee shop. But she'd been so distracted by Liam's lovely piano playing that she wasn't thinking about much else; the poor baristas had to call out her order number twice before she heard them.

On the porch, she pressed the doorbell with her pinky finger—it was either that or her elbow. She could hear footsteps approaching from inside; a second later, Henry's dad was opening the door for her.

"'Morning, Amelia." He gave her a warm smile. "Come on in."

As she stepped inside, she glanced down at the two cups and the brown paper bag in her hand. "I guess I could have offered to bring some for everyone."

"No worries at all," he laughed lightly. "We already ate, but thank you. Henry and Jen are out in the backyard. Personally, the weather's a little cold for my taste, but they seem to be liking it."

Amelia nodded—from where she was, she could see them sitting in patio chairs near the back door. But as she got closer, she could start to hear snippets of their conversation through the glass.

Jen looked concerned as she watched her son. "Do you think you should tell her about Sarah?" she was asking.

Amelia faltered. Sarah? Who's Sarah?

Henry appeared to exhale slowly; she could see the fall of his shoulders. "I don't know."

But before Amelia could have any further reaction, he spotted her through the door and brightened up, wiping the serious expression off his face and replacing it with a smile.

And so she smiled back, shoving the thought out of her mind as well as she could for the moment—there was no telling how big of a can of worms she'd be opening if she tried to bring it up right this second and they only had so much time left before Lily's parents would arrive.

But as Henry grabbed another chair for her and kissed the top of her head, an uncomfortable sensation settled in the pit of Amelia's stomach. Maybe it was just because the stability of their relationship was feeling a little more fragile this morning than it had twenty-four hours ago—she hoped that was all. She hoped that she was just feeling paranoid, that her intuition wasn't right.

Still, it was impossible not to wonder just a little bit if he might be keeping her in the dark about something important.