“Phoebe, would you mind leading grace?”

It was a rare evening where Phoebe had been honoured with the presence of her father for dinner. For once, James had been gracious enough to peel himself from the vault’s clinic, granted he’d have to return sooner or later, and Phoebe brims with delight.

“Sure, dad.”

She bows her head, expressing a prayer she had whispered to herself so many times alone in the diner as if it were a secret she wished nobody else to hear of. With closed eyes, she doesn’t falter with her words, and once she lifts her chin from her knuckles her father is beaming at her.

“You’ve been practising,” he observes, sipping from a wine glass that’s half-full with purified water.

Phoebe grins eagerly before planting a soft kiss on the pendant that hangs from her neck.

“I read the book every night before I go to bed,” she proclaims, licking her lips as hunger begins to settle in, and she keenly reaches for the silverware next to her plate.

Despite his age, there are already crow’s feet that tug at the corner of James’ weary eyes. Working in the clinic had proved to be back-breaking work at times, and with the long hours that came with it he barely had any time to spend with his daughter.

His heart aches, for he knew Catherine would have been disappointed. He gestures to her necklace with the end of his knife. “That used to be your mothers.”

“I know.”

Phoebe tentatively sets down her fork, pieces of InstaMash still stuck to it, and drops her eyes to her fingers as they fiddle with the cross chained at her throat. “She’s with God, isn’t she?”

“That she is, sweetheart,” James replies, nodding solemnly. Phoebe was barely a teenager, yet had already shown to be excelling in all her studies and vault-standard tests, and with each passing day she blossoms into an image of Catherine. “She’s watching over you, much like God is.”

“Is she proud of me?”