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Having dinner with her brother shouldn't be that complicated.
Not that everything that has to do with her brother is not complicated from the start, from the first time they exchanged glances from their seats at a table too big for three people, when Franziska had indicated - paying close attention to not to get noticed by Him, as on every other occasion - the correct cutlery for the appetizer, and Miles, for a second, had almost lost that nostalgic and so, so tired air with which he had arrived.
Obviously, there was the fact that they are both adults now, very busy adults, with no time to waste sitting together at a round table in Miles' kitchen in years-learned silence. You can't exactly expect someone you have only exchanged a few emergency calls with for a decade to take a week off to visit.
It is an exception.
It's snowing, but it is too thin snow to form the typical layer which indicated, long ago, that if they paid close attention to the sound of the main gate opening, they could take a few minutes of the day to walk in the garden behind the house, where you could not see the footprints of compressed snow from any of the windows from which He looked.
The first time Franziska managed to make her younger brother laugh was in the back garden, when she had, very carefully, drawn her family in the snow: Miles was represented next to her, and that had been enough. Ten minutes later, the still falling snow had obscured her drawing, but her brother had promised her he would remember it for at least the rest of the day.
Franziska notes that, next to the kitchen table, her brother had hung on the wall one of the few photos they still had of the house in Frankfurt, depicting two siblings in front of a locked bookcase, only there to remind those watching that they had the money for all those books, that they were academics, law students, prodigies.
She vaguely remembers that the photo was larger when the shot was taken, but she too cut Him out of the two photos of her in her Berlin apartment, leaving part of the frame empty. On the day she passed the zweite juristische Staatsexamen, so young, only the shadow of a hand resting on her right shoulder remains, to push her forward, to do more, more, more.
In the picture hanging in Miles' kitchen, there isn't even that. For a moment she wonders if her brother would have kept the original photo if he never knew the resolution of that trial.
This is a foolish idea.
Both of them were already aware that such a person was not the type to appreciate being portrayed in a kitchen, next to other photos of the rest of Miles' family. He probably would have removed all the photos, on principle.
There were no family photos in their home in Frankfurt, just a few paintings showing how they could afford to spend their money on such things, and some old Von Karma Family oil portraits, with capital "F", only those who they had earned a place in the corridors. Franziska and Miles had never come to deserve it, but apparently, they deserved a place in that kitchen.
Somehow, the kitchen photo matters more to both of them.
"It's mushroom soup." says Miles, placing two soup plates on the table. There are only three pieces of cutlery next to each plate, and a piece of bread placed in a small wicker container in the center of the table, also still warm.
Franziska watches the smoke rise from her portion, and something in the methodical way her brother moves his chair to sit, elbows perfectly off the table and posture perfected with years of experience, makes a frown appear on her face.
"What kind of mushrooms?" she asks him, just to make conversation, as he breaks a piece of bread in front of her and dips it into his soup.
She already knows the ingredients of that dish, memorized from the descriptions her brother told her when it was cold outside and his voice was blocked by a lump in his throat all evening, but they need something to talk about.
"Porcini. They are the easiest to cut."
The answer is always the same, and Franziska tries to ignore the way Miles holds all the tension in his shoulders, the way he doesn't let himself lean back against the chair, because she knows she's doing it too.
Neither of them has started eating yet.
Have you ever thought you were the favorite , Franziska would like to ask, Did you ever think that He would spare you, even for just a second, before the trial? That maybe there was a reason for His behavior, some fundamental lack in yours, that maybe in the end He cared about more than the image projected to the public?
She holds a breath.
"I thought they were spring mushrooms."
Miles stops breaking up his bread in the soup, but he doesn't look at her anyway.
"No, they arrive just after the summer, but then stay until November." he replies, in a perfectly neutral tone. This is the kind of conversation they can have over a meal, distant and impersonal and objective, of facts they both know. Trivial.
"Hm. They are only seen for a few months, then."
"In America only for a few days. Finding them in a supermarket is a challenge."
Just for a few days. Only a few times a year.
"Maybe you would find more in Europe, kleiner bruder."
Miles isn't looking at her, not directly, he's doing that thing where he stares into the space just behind her head, where he seems to be staring into her eyes when in reality he's not. Franziska has learned to recognize that kind of look before He could, but that's only because He never cared to look for enough time. Briefly, it makes her wonder if seeing Miles made Him feel guilty.
It's really not likely.
"Maybe I don't have time to go to Europe for something like that, Franziska."
Maybe you should, would be the answer.
Maybe I should, he'd say back
Maybe.
"I guess you're not here just to scold my choice of vegetables for a soup, though."
"Mushrooms are not a vegetable."
Miles raises an eyebrow.
"Oh, please ."
"They have no leaves, roots, or seeds, and they don't need light. By definition, they're not vegetables."
"The US Department of Agriculture considers them vegetables."
"The US Department of Agriculture is full of fools."
For a few seconds, they really look at each other, then her brother rolls his eyes and sighs. And he smiles.
"Are you telling me they are fruit?"
Franziska sighs too, but she is more frustrated. He knows she doesn't mean it, she does too.
"I'm saying they're not categorized as plants."
"Don't tell me they're animals."
Miles is still smiling, and somehow that makes Franziska smile too. He blows the soup in his spoon for a few seconds and takes a first taste.
"Foolish bruder, they're in another scientific realm in general, they don't count as animals or plants."
She also swallows a mouthful of soup. It tastes the same as she expected it to, because her brother always puts in too much parsley to counteract the sweet, burnt taste of when he leaves the mushrooms on the stove a little too long. She wonders if his father also did it.
Her father never taught her how to cook, but she assumes Gregory Edgeworth would be the kind of parent to teach easy dishes to his young son.
She feels guilty for something she didn't do, for a second.
"I didn't know you were interested in science, Franziska," and he let her win, but for once she doesn't take it as an offense.
"Frankly, I think you should care more about it."
"Maybe I'll take a trip to Europe to talk to mushroom pickers in person, and then I'll be interested."
"Maybe you should, Miles."