(Untitled)

[gabriel_tam]

This evening, for once, Gabriel Tam is not in his home office. He's sitting on the sofa in the comfortable upstairs den of the New Mayfair house, with a box of books on the low table before him and another on the floor nearby.

Currently he's paging through a copy of Carl Stephen's The Stars in their Courses: Constellations of Earth-that-Was and

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[regan_tam]

The cushions behind him sink slightly under Regan's hands, as she leans against the back of the sofa to look over her husband's shoulder.

She's smiling slightly, but the sight of those diagrams and the childish hand of the annotations brings a surge of bittersweet nostalgia. River always did have the habit of adding marginalia to her own books, though she was careful with anyone else's. It's been years since Regan looked at these; first she had no reason to, and then she couldn't bear to.

[gabriel_tam]

"Nĭ hăo." Gabriel smiles, turning his head in order to press a kiss to her cheek before glancing back at the book in his hands.

"How was the committee dinner?"

[regan_tam]

"It went well," she answers, the pleasure of that clear in her voice. "The hall was full, and I had a lovely talk with Sandy Amritsar. Naguib Goldberg, too." Her smile crooks with wry amusement, there; Mr. Goldberg is a children's author and activist, and two of his books are in the stack before Gabriel.

"All the speeches were even interesting. I decided to call it balance for that Heritage Foundation disaster."

[gabriel_tam]

He winces sympathetically at the memory, for after the event which had started with two speakers conveying their regrets due to illness and only worsened from there, Regan had shared her frustrations at the Foundation's evident incompetence with her husband.

At length.

"Then I'm very glad." Gabriel flips another page, and then closes the book and sets it to one side on the table before turning to see her better.

"It's been quiet here, actually."

He sounds almost ruefully surprised; quiet evenings are extremely rare for the two of them, these days.