Tina bolted after Noah, and pulled him to a stop by grabbing his pajama pant leg.
“Noah, you need to give Kari a kiss and wake her up!”
Noah looked down at the little girl at his feet. I was a few paces away still, but even from there I could tell that there was something off about Noah. The odd stillness, the complete lack of reaction to Tina, the long silence before he spoke.
“I don’t think that will gain the results you’re expecting Tina.”
Tina tilted her head at him in confusion.
“Huh?”
But Noah had already lost interest and moved on to the kitchen.
Tina wasn’t the only one that was blinking after Noah in shock.
It wasn’t just his reactions that had change, his voice was almost unrecognizable from the ditzy, soft tones he had always spoken with before. His voice was now a lot deeper, his words were stilted and held an unmistakable cold edge.
My eyes followed Noah into the darkened kitchen, as he slowly and methodically moved around. What was he doing? He seemed to know his way around the fancy espresso machine that Jiro guarded with his life.
“You know how to used that thing?”
He turned back to me and sighed.
“Yes, it would seem that I can at least manage that much.”
The man that turned to level his crimson eyes on me was a complete stranger. In the blink of an eye I knew that I had never met this person leaning against the counter in the kitchen before. 
There was nothing in that alien face that I recognized. Not the arrogant tilt of his head that allowed him to look down his narrow nose at me, even though he was a hell of a lot shorter. Not those blood red eyes that narrowed in distaste. Not the cold twist of his lips, making his sarcastic mouth almost sneer at me.
He raised his pale imperial eyebrows at me.
“Is there something else you wanted to say, Angie?”
Still seriously creeped out, I just shook my head.
He sniffed, somehow Noah even made that little inhale into a royal dismissal, and turned back to fiddling with that steam puck contraption that Jiro miraculously made coffee with. 
My eyes flicked around the kitchen some more, and it finally dawned on me.
Wait, where’s Jiro?
Damn, I must really be off my game today, if it took me this long to notice.
Jiro always got up before everyone else. Compared to some people, hours before. He was always bustling around the kitchen at this time of the morning, cooking up a storm. Or enough food for a small army.
I started running through the odds of Jiro having been kidnapped again, when he came walking out of his room towards the kitchen. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, even with the twins and Tina already on their stools along the counter we used as a dining table. 
Jiro gave the hungry kids only a side glance, then pulled a take-out box from his restaurant out of the fridge, opened it, placing the carton in front of Tina, then snagging a fork from the dish rack and gently putting that next to the box. 
Tina looked at the cold take-out straight from the fridge and gasped.
“Cake?!”
Jiro nodded at Tina. 
“Eat.”
Then poured himself a mug of coffee from the espresso maker that Noah really had gotten working, and leaned against the same counter in the kitchen, next to Noah.
Wow, Jiro letting Tina eat cake for breakfast. I guess Noah wasn’t the only one that changed over night. 
One twin shrugged, the other muttered.
“Dude, I guess we’re on our own this morning.”
The left twin elbowed the right twin.
“You scrounge the fridge, I hit the coffee shop down the street?”
Before the left twin got to far towards the door, I called after him.
“Oh, hey, could you bring me a coffee too?”
The teen boy slowly turned and took an uncomfortably long moment to stare at me. Then without saying a word, he turned again to leave.
Ummm, okay.
Yeah, everyone but Tina was kind of creeping me out this morning.
After that, everyone seemed to just scatter, doing their own thing without me. I was kind of left standing there in the middle of the living room feeling like an abandoned idiot. 
Okay then. 
So I sidestepped over to the TV to get some morning news. 
I don't know why, but ever since being kicked off the force I've become an avid news watcher. Especially in the mornings. 
There's just something about hearing someone drone on reporting the most recent crimes in the city that just makes me feel like I'm listening to the morning briefings at my old precinct again. 
I guess I'm just being nostalgic, but it's oddly soothing. 
I nodded and properly scowled like I was actually paying close attention. 
Wow, smitings up eight percent in the city this year, that's not good. But drive-by transfiguration attacks in school zones are down, so at least something's going right. I knew those after school out-reach programs would work. 
The news had moved on to the weather and sports stats I didn’t care about, by the time the coffee fetching twin returned. It had been a while, and I was a little worried that my drink would be stone cold.
Uh yeah, I didn’t need to be so worried.
 The twin handed his brother a cup from the little cardboard carrier in his hands. He grabbed another one for himself and then planted a short little cup down in front of Tina.  
“It’s a peach steamer, drink up shorty.”
And then there was no more. He chucked the empty caddy in the trash, and sat himself down next to his twin to dig into a reheated plate of day old pasta for breakfast.
Ummm, aren’t they forgetting something?
I scanned the counter for any sign of another steaming paper cup. No, there definitely wasn’t one.
I marched over to them and clamped my hands onto my hips.
“Hey, where’s my coffee?”
The coffee fetching twin shrugged one shoulder.
“I don’t know, where is it?”
The other one snorted and kept shoving food into his mouth.
A flash of heat ran through me and I could feel my jaw tightening along with my fist.
Had these two always been such complete jerks?
I had been waiting here for nearly a half hour thinking that they were bringing something back for me. If I had known they weren’t, I could have just gone out and gotten something myself. Now I didn’t have enough time to get anything.
And starting the day without any breakfast sucks!
For a tiny spark of a moment the thought of punching one of them in the back of their smart-ass head seemed really good.
No, Ange, remember what you learned in anger management class last week. Don’t act on impulses, act on thoughts. Think about what you do, before you do it!
Well, at the moment I was thinking reeeeeeeally hard about punching them in the back of their smug little mouthy heads. 
I wasn’t quite pissed off enough to start my calming mantra, so I began counting my heartbeats instead. Everyone had a shitty night, I didn’t need to start the morning by doing something they might regret.
Once I was pretty sure I wouldn’t deck anyone in the next few seconds, I found an empty stool next to Tina and sat down to dig into my nonexistent of breakfast and invisible fresh coffee.
I pulled out my phone and flicked through my notices to see if I got any heads up from my coworker Regina. 
Hmm, nothing so f –
Oh shit, was that what time it was? Crap we need to get going.
I looked up to point out the time, and realized that everyone was still in their pajamas.
“Umm, doesn’t everyone have work today?”
Noah barely pulled his mouth away from his coffee mug to talk.
“Called in sick. I’m busy at the hospital today.”
The twins bobbed their heads and mumbled.
“Sick.” 
“Sick.”
Jiro nodded.
“I’ll be taking Tina to see her mother today. I need to tell her what happened.”
Tina instantly perked up and bounced in her seat.
“We’re seeing Mommy?”
Oh right, Lydia would probably want to know as soon as possible.
And then it hit me.
Wait, they’re all taking the day off? Did they all decide this together without me? When did that happen? Did they wait until I went to bed to talk about it?
A ripple of prickly fire swirled and flickered up my spine.
Typical, just typical. They’re always pulling shit like this. 
Kari is always talking big about us being a family. Like we’re all in this together. But I’m always the one left standing on the sidelines. 
She only thinks this is a family because she’s never been in one.
An old, smoldering ember of rage guttered and then caught. 
I gritted my teeth against the memories of the family I had known so well, the one that I was actually a part of, the one that surrounded me with warmth and love and acceptance and so much joy, the one that taught me that this wasn’t how families worked, families didn’t just exclude people.
The one that she took away from me.
I texted Regina, asking her to let our manager Andy know that I would be in for the afternoon shift, but I was skipping the morning rush.
“Okay, Jiro, I’m going with you.”
Jiro looked up from his cup, a little surprised. He stared at me a long moment, probably wondering why.
Yeah, I admit that half of the reason I was going with Jiro was out of spite. They didn’t want to include me in their little plans? Fine, than I’ll just include myself.  
Jiro shrugged a shoulder.
“Fine.”