Page 98 of Zane

He heard the front door open, and a moment later, Kelsey appeared in the doorway. When their gazes met, her steps came to a halt. Just for a moment, however, then she walked further into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Zane said.

“Good morning.” She gave him a brief smile. “You’re not usually up this early.”

“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep so decided to get up. How was work? Was the meeting okay?”

“It was fine. They just wanted to reinforce what they expect from the overnight shift. Apparently, some people think that since there’s not as much oversight that they don’t have to do as much work.”

“I’m sure that didn’t apply to you,” Zane said.

She turned from where she’d filled her glass with water. “No. I try to do my best, even if it’s not my favorite job.”

Zane could see that she looked tired, and he wondered if the weird hours were wearing her out. She’d said that their previous life had been lived with odd hours, but not this odd.

“Morning,” Rori said as she joined them in the kitchen. “Wow. You’re up early, Zane.”

“Decided to see what it was like in these early morning hours.”

“Well, now we’re busted,” Rori said. “Zane’s going to find out how exciting it is to be up this early. It’s just a party every day.”

While they’d been talking, Lee had gone to the stove and put a frying pan on a burner. As it heated, he went to the fridge and pulled out the eggs and butter.

Kelsey sat down beside Zane and took a drink of her water. Rori poured herself a cup of coffee, then watched as Lee cracked several eggs into the pan and salt and peppered them.

As the eggs cooked, Lee put a couple of English muffins into the four-slot toaster. When the eggs were done, Lee assembled them with the English muffins and put one on each plate and set one in front of Kelsey and one in front of Rori.

“Thank you,” Kelsey said. “I’m starving.”

Had Lee been feeding Kelsey every morning? If Zane had known she ate when she got home, he might have made more of an effort to get out of bed and make her some food. For some reason, he’d assumed she came home and went right to bed.

“Want an egg muffin, bro?” Lee asked as he went back to the pan and added a little more butter.

“Sure. That would be great.”

It wasn’t too long before he had an egg muffin of his own. “Thank you.”

As they ate, Lee and Rori chatted about the day ahead of them at the clinic. Zane wasn’t quite awake enough to contribute meaningfully to the conversation, and Kelsey seemed like she was too tired to talk very much.

Zane’s text alert went off as he took his last bite, and when he picked his phone up, he saw that Pastor Kennedy had replied to him.

P. Kennedy:I’d love to meet with you. Would ten work?

That would be fine.

P. Kennedy:Will you need a ride?

Nope. I can drive since my injured leg is my left leg.

P. Kennedy:Then I’ll see you at ten.

Looking forward to it.

As Zane lowered his phone, Kelsey got to her feet and took her plate and glass to the dishwasher.

“Want me to put yours in the dishwasher, Zane?” she asked.

“Sure. That would be great.”

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