"Er — no," he admitted, to the question of whether Zelda was home. Not that it changed the situation, because surely she would agreed just as readily, but it did make him feel a little conspicuous given that he didn't have a ready explanation for why she wasn't. "There was — something at the Ministry," he said vaguely**. He hadn't asked. She had seemed annoyed when she brought it up, and Alfred hadn't been keen on digging into whether she was irritated with the task bringing her in or irritated with him for some reason — or maybe she wasn't upset at all and he had merely projected his own frustration with another manifestation of work-over-family. In any case, he had no more information than she was at work, and by this time of the evening he couldn't even wager a guess as to when she would be back. If the conversation continued in this vein it seemed inevitable that Evander and Caroline would realize how little Alfred and Zelda were speaking to each other these days, which he absolutely didn't want... particularly not when there was obviously something more important to discuss.

"It's not an imposition," he insisted, to steer them back forcefully to the topic at hand. "You'd do the same for us. I'll have nurse make up the beds for the children. Do you want them in with Orion and Carina, or — ?" He drifted off, thinking that perhaps the children, frightened as they seemed, might be better off in a trundle bed in the guest room with their parents. Knowing how children were liable to latch on to such ideas, though, he didn't want to be the one to suggest it if Evander and Caroline were hoping for a reprieve.

---