"Who is going where?" John asked with a gruff voice.
Neither of them answered right away. Helga's hands went still on the table. Selene stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway, not quite turning around, not quite staying put either.
John stepped inside and closed the front door behind him. His coat was still on. He looked at Selene's bag sitting near the hallway table, then at Selene, then past her at Helga. His face gave nothing away. That was almost worse than if it had.
"I asked a question," he said with a normal tone.
"I'm packing my things," Selene said. She turned to face him fully. "I'm going to Lys's house. As we have been engaged since last night."
John looked at her for a moment. Then at Helga again.
Helga met his eyes without flinching, which took more out of her than she wanted to let on.
John didn't say anything. He just turned around and walked down the hallway toward his room. He opened the door to get inside, then closed it softly, not making much sound.
Selene and Helga looked at each other across the kitchen with confusion.
Helga's eyebrows were slightly raised, not dramatically, just enough to say she had no idea what that was either. Selene turned back toward the hallway, staring at his closed door like it might explain itself. But it didn't.
She was still standing there trying to work out what his silence meant, whether it was the quiet before something worse, or something else entirely. But before she could figure out his mood, the door to John's room opened again.
He came back down the hallway. In his hands was a folded piece of fabric, old by the look of it, the color a deep, muted blue that had softened with age. He stopped in front of Selene and held it out to her.
Selene took it without thinking and then looked down at it. It was a dress. Old-fashioned in the cut, the kind that hadn't been common for twenty years or more, but the fabric was still good, and it had been kept carefully. She ran her thumb along the edge of the neckline.
She knew whose it was before he said anything.
"It was your mother's," John said. His voice came out flatly. "She wore it the day she moved into this house, too." He looked at the dress, not at Selene, while talking about it. "You should wear it too when you go."
Selene didn't say anything for a moment. She looked at the dress in her hands.
"Are you coming with me?" she asked the question without thinking much about it.
John glanced up. "Get ready. I don't have much time." He turned and went back into his room without waiting for her response.
The door to his room clicked shut again.
Selene stood in the hallway holding her mother's dress, and the house was completely quiet except for the sound of something shifting in the walls the way old houses do, and she had absolutely no idea what to do with any of this.
She went back to the kitchen doorway and looked at Helga.
Helga looked back at her with the same confusion as Selene.
"What happened to him?" Selene said quietly, so it wouldn't carry down the hallway.
Helga shook her head slowly. "I don't know. Last night he was…." She stopped talking suddenly. "You know what, just get ready fast. Don't give him a reason to change his mind."
"He seemed like he wasn't happy about any of this last night."
"Yes, he wasn't," Helga said. "But he came back with that dress." She nodded at the fabric in Selene's hands. "He went in there specifically to get it. That didn't happen by accident. He must've changed his mind about your engagement."
Selene looked down at the dress again. It was in perfect condition. Kept in his room all these years, apparently, somewhere she had never found it once. This was her second time seeing this dress in her life. The first time was once when they moved to this house.
She didn't have time to think about what the change in his mood meant. She just went to her room, changed quickly, and came back out.
The dress fit well enough, a little loose at the waist but close. She looked at herself once in the small mirror above the washstand and then stopped looking.
When she came back to the hallway to collect her bag, she stopped.
"Helga." She turned toward the kitchen. "Get your things."
Helga appeared in the doorway. "Lady Selene, we already talked about…"
"I'm not leaving without you. Get your things. This is an order." She said the order in a little rough voice, clearly frustrated with her.
"You can't just…."
They were still going back and forth, voices low but getting less low, when John's door opened again. He came down the hallway and looked at both of them standing there arguing in the kitchen doorway.
"What is this about?" he asked.
Both of them stopped at once. Seeing his presence suddenly.
John looked at Helga. "You're not packed yet?"
Helga blinked. "I…. what? I'm going?"
"Of course, you're going too. Isn't it obvious?!" He said it the way he said things that seemed self-evident to him, with a faint edge of impatience for having to say it at all. "Did you think I was going to leave her there alone in a house full of strangers? Of course, someone has to go with her."
Helga stared at him in disbelief.
John looked at Selene briefly, with an expression of a man surrounded by people moving slower than he needed them to. "Pack up fast. Both of you. I have a council meeting before evening, and I'm not going to be late because you two stood in the doorway all morning."
He turned around and went to the front of the house.
Selene looked at Helga, and Helga also looked back at her. Her expression had moved somewhere past surprise into something more careful, trying to work out what she was looking at, whether this was real or whether there was something else underneath it she needed to be ready for.
Selene didn't have an answer for her confusion, as she herself was confused at her father's odd behaviour today. After a while, she just decided to leave things as they were and picked up her bag.
"Go pack," she said, hurrying Helga. "Quickly. Before he decides differently."
Helga went fast. She was faster about it than Selene had expected her to be; the bag she came back with was small and efficiently assembled, the kind you pack when you've learned not to need much. She appeared in the hallway ten minutes later, coat on, bag in hand, face arranged into the neutral composure she wore when she was in uncertain territory and didn't intend to let it show that she was ready for everything.
They went to the front of the house together.
John was already outside, standing on the path with his coat buttoned and his hands behind his back, looking down the lane with patience. He heard them come out and turned around.
He saw the two of them. Both of the women had their own bags in their hands, and Selene was wearing the dress he told her to wear. Helga was trying to take the bag out of Selene's hand, and Selene refused to let her take it.
Something moved through his face, quick and unreadable. But it was gone before either of them could name it.
"Took long enough," he said, brushing off his facial expression. "Come on. I have to be back before the evening bell."
He turned and started walking without checking whether they were following or not.
Selene and Helga exchanged one last look on the doorstep. Then they followed him, the door of the house swinging shut behind them, and ahead of them down the lane, John walked at his usual pace toward Lys's house as though this were an ordinary outing of his.