Once in the kitchen, Estella cleared off their butcher block of its morning remnants, gathered a set of glass bowls for the mise en plac, and then proceeded to pile Oliver with onions, carrots, and celery. On the side she placed garlic, mushrooms, and pearl onions.

“What are we making?”

“First, we will make a mirepoix. A mirepoix is the foundation of many classic dishes, like chicken soup or tomato sauce. Today we’ll use it for the classic French dish, chicken fricassee, using vegetables from our garden and one of our butchered chickens. Your family should be able to eat it without issue. Though we’re out of blood flour, so they will have to forgive me for not having bread for them. You must take Hannah’s word for it about how the rolls taste.”

He drummed his fingers on the counter, “How long will this take?”

“All together? Two or three hours, depending on how much time it takes to prep for cooking.” Truthfully, it could take a fraction of that time if you knew what you were doing, but Oliver looked as comfortable as a barn cat newly honored with house cat status standing next to a knife in the kitchen.

His eyebrows shot up, “Two to three hours? Hunting only takes minutes, Estella. Make food for Hannah, don’t concern yourself with the rest of us.”

Estella waved her wine opener at him, “Yes, I am aware how long it takes to hunt, Oliver. I could also give them a meal that takes minutes to make and not hours but where is the love in that? The care for another person that I am in position to provide? In our home, the kitchen is the heart. Why would I not let you or your family be a part of it?” Her face was flushed by the end of her speech, her hands only stopped when the words ceased.

Oliver, for his part, looked overwhelmed. Estella could see his throat working nervously but he did not move back or towards her. The only movement she could see was the twitching of his hand at his side. He heaved a huge sigh that curved his chest and turned quietly to the cutting board. He chopped onions in silence.

Estella watched him, shifting her feet back and forth..

“What is it, Estella? Am I cutting an onion wrong?”

She felt the heat rising to her cheeks. She wasn’t sure how to do this, she realized. She had never prepared a meal with anyone that wasn’t her immediate family before.

Oliver stared harder at his vegetables, faint color touching his cheeks now. Oh, bother, she's making him nervous.

“No, actually. Though there is a wrong way to chop an onion. It’s just… I’m sorry. Food and meals are very important to my family. It’s how we express our feelings for each other and others.”

Oliver gave her a dubious look, “And you’re showing us that you care?”

“Yes, but at Saint-Tourre we’re supposed to care.”

His chopping became louder, “So you’re fulfilling another obligation?”

He pushed away from the counter, one hand coming to his hip while around pointed at her.

“No, not an obligation.” She told him in a low voice. Oliver dropped his hands.

“Then what? What are you trying to express by feeding us this meal? Only Hannah needs food.”

Her hand waved in the air broadly at their kitchen, “That—that you are safe. If only for a moment, you are safe here.”

Oliver didn’t respond.

Estella tapped her fingers against the countertop. When she looked at him again, he was watching her with a confused sort of expression, like she was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “Food for me has always meant home. It’s where my nonno would make risotto and pasta. Where my meme made her rabbit stew—a fricassee like what I will feed you today. The kitchen always smelled a little like the wine my grandparents like to cook with and then drink with our meal. All of those memories, of cooking together, and the smells. It all feels like home. But what is home, Oliver?”

He leaned against the counter and considered her question. Estella waited patiently. She noticed that while he thought, Oliver rolled his jaw back and forth slightly. “I guess home to me is my mother tapping her foot to the music that me and Annette had played and fought over deciding what to play. My dad, John, often grades in the evenings so ruffling papers and scratching pens are common background noises too. Especially because Annette and Hannah do their school work on the coffee table. The scratching of their pencils is enough to drive you crazy some nights.”

He frowned, “But you mention smells. It’s been decades since I had it, but the smell of black licorice reminds me of my mom and I can’t watch baseball without thinking about father.”

“What were their names? Your birth parents? My grandparents, the ones who raised me, were Marguerite and Timoteo.”

“Angelica and Charles.” He looked away from her then, his eyes unfocused. She reached out her hand and laid it over his. When she made contact, Oliver snapped back to her, his forest eyes dark and wide.

“Thank you for sharing, Oliver.” They held that contact until she felt her heart quicken.

She cleared her throat and smoothed her skirts, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that home means comfort. It means being surrounded by those who love you and who care for you. When I left the United States, a chicken fricassee was the first meal I had that made me feel like maybe everything was going to be okay.”

“Estella…thank you. For sharing this with us. I know I must seem ungrateful but you shouldn’t have to do all of this by yourself. Taking care of Saint-Tourre and us…it’s too much for one person.”

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“But I am not doing it all by myself.” She grinned and pointed at him, “See! You are here.” A laugh bubbled out of her, “See what I said about prep taking time? We’re always chatting like this and you’ve only cut half the onion. Go on. Keep chopping. We can discuss lighter topics now.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Oh gosh,” such an American statement coming out in her French accent made Oliver laugh. “Um. Oh. Do you like music?”

“Yes. My sister and I like to fight over control of what’s playing at home, remember?”

Estella’s hand reached for a small white box sitting on the window sill. “How do you feel about music from your generation?”

He smiled, “I am particularly fond of it.”

“Bien! Let’s hope you like the French equivalent of it.”

“You like 20s and 20s era music?”

She laughed, “It’s our kitchen music. It’s the only music all of us can agree on. The ‘Roaring 20s’ music is the only thing Jacques, Matthieu, and Theodora all like that plays on the radio. Plus, it reminds them of the war.”

“It’s a good thing that it reminds them of a terrible display of humanity?”

“Non, Oliver. It is because of the wonderful display of humanity they got to witness and experience during that time. Even in the darkest times, you have to hold onto love and kindness. It’s what will see us through to the end.”

“Poetic.”

She smiled, “Theodora likes to remind me of that every once in a while.”

Oliver examined the carrots he was supposed to cut, “But what kind of music do you like?”

“I shamelessly enjoy modern pop. Jacques does too but we can’t convert Theodora.”

“You and Annette and Hannah would get along well.”

“Annette is your sister? I’m sorry, I’ve been so focused on getting everything ready that I forgot to even ask for your family members' names. Hannah is the human— you said earlier that your mom cooks for her.”

“Yes, that’s right. My mother is Eva, she’s a computer programmer. My father is Johannes but he’s gone by John since moving to the United States a few centuries ago.”

“Johannes? Where was he from?”

“The Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria specifically.”

“Does he work too?”

“He’s a teacher. Sometimes adjuncts for colleges too.”

“Oh, that’s fun. Theodora does the same thing. Do you work too?”

“No, not really. What about you?”

Estella told him about going to Paris with Jacques, and the people watching that she gets to do there. “But mostly, I study magic and the humanities under Matthieu and Theodora’s instruction.”

“You don’t go to school?”

Estella shifted her feet, “No, I’ve pretty much only been homeschooled.” She felt a flush of embarrassment. Estella is aware how weird that makes her sound, like a pariah or someone with three eyes. She nervously tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Homeschooled by some of the most impressive vampires in Europe? That must be—” Amazing. Daunting. Fascinating. “Lonely.”

A bitter laugh escaped Estella, “I can see why you would think that but I didn’t feel lonely. Not with my family.”

And that was true. She didn’t feel lonely—there was always someone to meet in Paris or some visitor calling on their home, like Marianne’s family. But…she would not say she felt trapped but she certainly felt isolated by her life. As if she was kept separated from the world of the living by the events of her life.

Sometimes she thought she was a corpse, kept moving by the gods.

She asked over her shoulder, “Are you lonely?” There was something about Oliver. He wasn’t broody or angry or bitter—none of those attitudes hung in the air about him, flavoring the space around him. But the way he held himself, slightly apart, head bent just so, shoulders broad but curved inward, made him seem as if he observed the world more than took a part in it.

“Sometimes.”

She dropped the lid she was holding, so caught off guard by his honesty. She assumed he’d lie. “Even with your family?” She whirled around to look at him but his head was bent over the carrots, carefully chopping.

“Even with my family.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, “What do you like to study?”

“I love languages.”

“Languages?”

“Yes, everything is in a language: society, culture, history, experience. The beauty. The horror. It’s all there.”

“It is?”

“Oh, definitely. Look at French. The flowering of the French language led to some of the most impressive works of literature in Europe. But it’s also a history of colonization too. If you don’t work, do you study or have a hobby? Obviously, you studied French.”

For some reason, this made Oliver frown at the celery he just placed on the cutting board. It’s true. “I…guess I did. But I like photography. I still have an Argus C3 and a Kodak 35.”

Now that was interesting. She wished Matthieu would let her use a camera instead of making her own drawings of plants. “What do you photograph? After so long, you must be very good at it.”

“I’m just a hobbyist. My photos are pretty simple and usually blurry.”

She waved her spoon at him, “Well, I think they sound lovely. There is so much beauty in simplicity.”

Oliver smiled sheepishly at her and she couldn’t help but notice the tiny bit of color on his neck at Estella’s words. He cleared his throat, “What about you? Do you have hobbies or do you only study?”

They went on like that the rest of the time in the kitchen, talking about hobbies and interests while she put together the fricassee. They both like reading and museums. Oliver shared that he liked to look at the old botanical drawings. When Estella told him that she had to do those drawings as part of her studies, he begged to see them. She told him she’d rather take pictures but he said anyone can take a photo, not everyone can draw. Estella learned more about what Oliver photographed: his family in daily life, usually. He was surprised to hear that she played the concertina.

“Why of all the instruments did you learn the concertina? It sounds like a funeral.”

“It was a gift from Jacques. He was trying to rope me into his annual musical torment of Theodora. But I like the way it sounds, all sad and melancholy.”

She removed the fricassee from heat and beckoned Oliver over, “Take a deep breath.”

Oliver did as she instructed, breathing deeply the fragrant broth. It smelled like sweet wine and fresh rosemary and thyme.

For the second time in 80 years his mouth watered for something other than blood. Impossibly, this smelled more delicious than the unexpected omelet yesterday. He turned to Estella, his lips parted in awe and eyes wide. They were closer than he realized, he could see the flecks of color in her irises.

She was smiling at him, “Delicious, no?”

He swallowed convulsively. She hadn’t moved away, just stood there triumphantly.

The bell rang, making both of them jump.