"Oh, that's fair," Ford admitted in response to Tycho's comment about tinkering. He'd neglected to think about anything he currently did when contemplating the possible answers to Tycho's question of what he would like to do. Why was that? The general dreariness he felt about his relationship with Macnair seemed to be seeping into all of the other aspects of his life, coloring them with grey. At the beginning of the summer he'd been quite thrilled by the prospect of spending the occasional evening helping Tycho come up with new tricks for his seance show, but by now some of the luster and newness had worn off; it had ceased to be excited and just become something he did, and now when he was feeling otherwise glum it hardly even registered.

"I think part of the problem is whenever I'm not with them I feel a little guilty about it," he admitted. The tinge of guilt he felt at excluding his sisters from a potential social event had been bearable when he was at the height of things with Macnair. Leaving his sisters in the lurch for an evening in order to feel wildly happy and in love was one thing; abandoning them for a mediocre evening where he constantly worried about a looming awkward conversation was something else. "Maybe that will get a little better when Verity's married, but I don't know. Clementine is going to come out this year. And Grace is —" he drifted off, unable to say anything particularly charitable about her marriage prospects but also unwilling to malign her.

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