It happened on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday, three days after the journal, in the middle of an argument about whether Ezra’s insistence on rearranging the spice rack counted as a violation of the household rules or merely an improvement Lucien hadn’t asked for.

The morning had started ordinarily enough — Lucien reviewing emails at the counter while Ezra moved through his now-familiar routine of coffee and quiet, unconscious humming, both of them settled into a rhythm that had, somewhere in the past weeks, stopped feeling like an arrangement and started feeling simply like how mornings were supposed to go. It was Ezra who’d first noticed the spice rack, examining it...