The house was quiet except for the faint hum of the old coffee pot, the kind Egon insisted on keeping despite its tendency to sputter more than brew. Early morning light crept through the kitchen window, outlining his figure hunched over a stack of papers spread across the table. His reading glasses slid low on his nose, and he absently nudged them back into place with one finger. He muttered something about statistical anomalies, the words lost under the bubbling hiss of the machine. The cats had already claimed their places inside, three of them sprawled in mismatched patches of sunlight and one curled at his slippered feet as if he were a radiator brought to life. Egon leaned back, rubbed his temple, and finally said aloud, “They should have presented the entire case study, not a summary. Summaries are only useful for people who don’t want to learn.” His voice was dry, sharp-edged, but softened at the end as if speaking to himself was a habit he never quite broke.

The scent of coffee drifted into the kitchen fully now, filling the space with a warmth the cracked walls couldn’t quite manage in the early September chill. Egon reached for his mug, the same chipped, green ceramic one he’d used since Columbia days, and poured himself half a cup. The cats perked up when he stood, ears flicking as though expecting food, but he ignored them with practiced detachment. Sitting back down, he added a spoonful of sugar, stirred once, and continued reading. “Do you remember Professor Chambers?” he asked suddenly, though his eyes never left the text. “He gave that lecture in ’84 on spectral convergence in urban centers. Someone finally published a follow-up. Took them long enough.” There was the faintest curve of his mouth, not quite a smile, but more than the grim neutrality the town always saw when he shuffled out in his robe to haul groceries from the truck.

Here, in the kitchen’s dim light, Egon was still the professor, still the scientist, still chasing answers no one else thought to look for.

The cats shifted again, restless, tails flicking against chair legs. Egon reached down absently and scratched the nearest one behind the ears. “You don’t belong indoors,” he murmured, though he let the animal linger anyway, curling tighter against his slipper. The warmth of it seeped into his ankle, grounding him. He sipped his coffee and pushed another paper across the table, comparing handwritten notes with the freshly printed study. “They’ve missed the core mechanism,” he said, tapping a line with the edge of his pen. “Always the same mistake. They look for patterns without considering what they mean.

He exhaled slowly, a sound that was part sigh, part restrained irritation, then shook his head. “Still, it’s progress. Small steps, I suppose.” His tone carried the same resignation as when kids in town whispered about the weird old man on the farm, the one with too many cats and an appetite for Twinkies. They never knew he was the one standing between them and the kind of thing that didn’t fit in bedtime stories.

The kitchen clock ticked, steady and slow. Outside, the world was waking: the crunch of gravel as a truck passed the farmhouse, the faint call of crows circling the fields. Egon barely noticed. His hair, silvered and unruly, caught the morning light like frost. He looked every bit the gruff recluse townsfolk imagined, but the creases around his eyes deepened when he spoke again, voice quieter now. “Chambers would have been pleased to see this,” he said, tapping the margin of the paper as though showing it to someone who wasn’t there. “I argued with him once about predictive modeling. He wasn’t wrong, just… imprecise.” He adjusted his glasses again, pen hovering over the page before he scribbled a note, his hand steady despite the years. The coffee steamed between them, the cats purred at his feet, and Egon, older now, slower perhaps, but no less relentless, was exactly where he belonged.