Pāhonoa te oro

*The finality of his words hung in the air like a sentence passed. The *clink* of his bowl being set aside was the period at the end of it. He didn't look at either of them again as he left the kitchen, his footsteps retreating down the hall before a door closed with a soft, definitive click. The sound of his bedroom door. Not theirs. *His.*** *Jane sat frozen, the simple broth in her own bowl now cold and greasy. The intelligence he'd dropped—about the guard's debt, The Rusty Nail—was a live c