I lean against the kitchen doorway and watch. It’s like a dance. He lunges here, he extends his arms, he twirls and spins. For a tall, broad man, he’s surprisingly graceful.

“I feel as though I should applaud,” Peter murmurs in my ear. He’s standing close behind me, still mostly in the hallway. I notice he’s positioned himself so he could bolt if he wants, and it makes me want to protect him. He’s afraid of people, I think. He spends his life saving them, yet faced with them... I feel as though I have peeked underneath his skin. I want to step back against him and let him fold his arms around me, if he wants to...but I don’t move. Not in front of Victoria and Sean.

I wonder if Claire and I are the only ones he’s close to. He’s never mentioned others. The few times I’ve tried to ask about his past, he’s steered the conversation away, and I haven’t pushed. I can understand not wanting to talk about the past. It hurts too much.

“Best part about it is the surprise,” Victoria says. She’s leaning against the wall near the refrigerator. She was so quiet that I hadn’t noticed her in contrast to the whirling swirl that is her fiancé. “I don’t think even he knows what he’s making.”

“There’s a plan!” he calls out. “There’s always a plan!”

“But do you stick to it?”

“All plans change in the heat of battle. Or the heat of the kitchen.” He dances to the sink and adds more water into a sizzling skillet. He swirls it around as he sashays back to the stove. He winks at Victoria, and it occurs to me that the dance is mostly for her benefit. She’s smiling broadly, fondly, proprietarily at him. For an instant, I imagine what it would feel like to look at Peter like that.

“Were you a cook before you came here?” I ask.

For an instant, he pauses, the rhythm of the dance broken. Victoria glares at me and says, “It’s not considered good manners to ask about life before Lost.”

“Oh.” I think of her revelation upstairs.

“Most people know that.”

“Well, if most people weren’t trying to kill me, maybe I’d have had a chance to learn the local culture. As it is...consider me rude, but I’m not going to pretend my life before here didn’t exist. I have every intention of returning to it as soon as possible.” I feel Peter tense beside me, and I realize it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned returning home. I wonder if I’ve hurt him. Glancing at him, I can’t read his expression. He’s watching Sean cook.

“Bully for you,” Victoria says. “Not all of us had such happy times before. When I...when we return, we’ll start fresh.” She glares at me as if daring me to ask more about what she said upstairs. I wish I dared ask, but she holds herself so straight and still and has such a controlled face that I’m afraid to crack that facade. Besides, I don’t want to antagonize these people. The whole point of this meal is to make peace.

I take a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just... Sorry.” I say it as much to Peter as to Victoria. He must know that I still want to return to my mother. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about him.

Victoria studies me for a minute. I squirm under her stare. It feels like the evaluating stare of my European History teacher, who we used to say could dissolve flesh with her eyes. “You talk, if you’re so keen on sharing. What’s your story?”

Faced with the same question I wanted to ask them, I don’t want to answer it, either. Not to these...friends, allies, whatever they are. “Not much of a story. Had a job. Lived in an apartment in L.A. Mom moved in with me a year or two ago when her bills got too high.”

Victoria taps her lips with her finger. Her nails are perfectly manicured a deep red. “That doesn’t sound like enough to lead you here. Or anything so salacious that it would make the Missing Man run from you.”

“I don’t know why he ran.” I manage to keep my voice even, though I want to shout or climb on the counter or throw the pots and pans that Sean is casually flinging food into. I feel Peter’s hand on my shoulder. It calms me. “I’d never met him before. I’d never even heard of him.”

As if Sean senses the awkwardness—of course he does, how could he miss it? —he interrupts in a cheerful voice, “Lucky you have a working fridge. Not every house is hooked up.”

“It was like that when we found it.” I don’t mention how Peter knew it was here, how he guided us here, or how he keeps me safe every day. He could have left at any time, but he didn’t.

The air feels as thick with tension as it is with smells, and my stomach growls, which surprises me, considering it’s also clenched. I have an urge to put things back in the cabinets, to clean the pots, to tell Sean to be more careful. But I don’t. I listen to the sizzles and the clanks and the clinks and the clatter and try not to feel as though my bones are cracking inside me from holding myself so still.

“Most people guessed you’re not dead,” Victoria says conversationally.

“You swore not to kill her,” Peter says. His hand tightens on my shoulder. “And that means you can’t do anything that will get her killed. You can’t tell anyone she’s here or that you saw her or where this house is or that she’s alive.”

“I didn’t set the mob on her,” Victoria says.

Peter scowls at her. “You didn’t stop them.”

“That’s part of the definition of mob. Unstoppable.”

“Claire stopped them,” I say, and then I clamp my mouth shut. Peace, I remind myself.

“Claire’s adorable. I lack that quality.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Victoria was stunning, gorgeous even, but she wasn’t cute.

“You didn’t try,” Peter says. I cover his hand with mine, cautioning him. We don’t want to fight with these people.

Victoria scowls at us. “The Missing Man is gone, the void is encroaching, and the only difference in town is her arrival—”

“I helped you!” I point to her hand, the one with the star sapphire ring. “I’m not the enemy here. The void is the enemy!” Peter’s hand is still on my shoulder, soft, warm, bolstering me. On the counter, Claire has quit stacking spices and is waiting, tense. She’s in a crouch. Her hand is on her pocket near her knife.

Sean pauses in his cooking. “It was oddly peaceful in the void. I felt...strangely safe.”

With that change of topic, the moment diffuses. Victoria leans back against the wall. Claire lowers her hand. Peter says in a conversational tone, “It lulls you. It draws out your melancholy. It makes you think about what pains you. It wants you to give up trying.”

“Why?” I ask.

“It’s hungry. Always hungry. It has an insatiable need to grow. It wants to destroy all the lost places and subsume the souls within.” He says it so matter-of-factly, as if this soul-destroying substance weren’t just half a mile outside my house, as if it hadn’t been capable of delivering the ocean I was dreaming about to nearly my doorstep.

“It seems to be succeeding,” Victoria says.

“It’s simply following its nature. Misery likes company. You can’t blame it. Or Lauren,” Peter says. “But you can blame the Missing Man. After all, he’s done this before.” He darts forward and takes a stack of plates. “Claire, help me set the table.” He whisks them into the dining room.

“You can’t make a statement like that and leave the room,” Victoria says.

“Can and did.” Peter’s voice floats singsong into the dining room.

Victoria marches after him. I’m torn between wanting to tell Victoria to back the hell off and wanting to know what Peter meant. I follow her.

“Vic, go easy,” Sean calls after her. “He did find me.”

“And he brought a train!” Claire says, chasing us into the dining room. “I love my train! I’m going to be an engineer. A princess engineer who rules the tracks!”

Skidding the plates across the table, Peter sends each plate into position. Claire fetches napkins, all mismatched linen napkins that I found and scooped up once so we could be civilized while we ate. She sets with mismatched (but silver) utensils. He looks like an ordinary older brother performing tricks to entertain his babysitter, unconcerned with the irate dinner guests. I am certain he’s doing it to infuriate Victoria, and I stifle a smile.