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Morticia had always known that outsider impression was everything. Good breeding made a woman what she was and facilitated her movement; up or down. She was exceptionally well bred.

She had stumbled upon this understanding in her last weeks of finishing school years ago. Every other lesson she had either understood before, or felt unnecessary in her life. She knew how to hold a knife and fork and knew how to host an excellent and entertaining soiree. These qualities did her no harm and allowed her husband's businesses to flourish and her parties to be considered the best among their circle of family and friends. She was delicately diplomatic on all fronts on these occasions. An aspect of her good breeding.

She had always been someone who has observed others as a way of working her way through the world, for learning, or on the more base occasions, for entertainment. The trait of the observer had been something she had given to her keenly, acutely intelligent daughter. Her daughter who was nowhere to be found as she looked upon the guests who had just crossed their threshold.

It struck her, not for the first time, that most of the guests you invited into your home weren't really welcome at all. Those who were welcome did not need to be invited.

And she knew people watched them and saw something entirely different too. What these Beinekes saw could have a variety of outcomes. They might watch them and see eccentricities beyond sensible reason, unshakeable allies, a formidable couple who worked together to get the best of anything on offer. They will see, she thought to herself, exactly what I want them to see.

She was quietly magnetic and she encouraged him to be loudly engaging; it had always been the way of it. He bounced off of her security, her assurance, and she knew that this was the best way to see her husband advance. Then they both achieved. Any guest would think that Mr Addams was in charge: a friend would know different.

Another aspect of her good breeding was her unfailing manners. She had oft found herself in situations where someone had invaded her home, her stamping ground (though she was not one partial to stamping), and she had had to deal with them in a manner that was unfailingly polite and deadly.

All of this analysis came into her clever mind before the Beinekes were over the threshold and before she could shut her suspicions down. It all occurred before her husband had a moment to speak and it all came about because of the way his eyes wouldn't meet hers.

She knew him as well as she knew herself; sometimes she lost the outlines of their individual identities while attempting to decipher their differences. Right now though, it felt as if he could be on the other side of the room or the other side of the world and it would not make a difference.

She looked at everyone in the lobby, her eyes scanning them all, and then his voice brought sound back to the world; as if a barrier had been shattered.

"Morticia, my beautiful wife," he motioned towards her with a theatrical hand.

Gomez was insufferably vain…and she loved it. She loved how proud, how covetous, how truly he was a braggart when it came to all matters concerning her. He loved her like a curio; for friends to be jealous of, for associates to covet, for family to loathe because of his adoration and her value and for him something to be curated, studied, and treated as a prize.

His smile was one of a collector when they find a rarity that they have wanted forever and get to keep. Despite his evident discomfort and strangeness surrounding this evening, Gomez could never quite get past those moments of sheer pleasure in her existence.

It made it incredibly difficult to be irritated at him even when she wanted to be.

She pictured a vine of suspicion growing inside her, attaching itself first to her arteries where it branched into her veins and capillaries; leaving its unique and stinging poison as it went.

She inclined her head towards their guests, moving towards them and pushing her vague suspicions to the side. They looked startled, though for what reason of the multiple she couldn't decide. Regardless of what it was, it made her proud to think it might be something of her creation.

Her long legs covered the space in a stride and she offered her hand first to the husband. He blushed, fumbled, then obviously recalling polite society bent to kiss the back of her hand. His lips were rough and awkward, and he squirmed against her cold skin. Still, she didn't miss the way his starved hand gripped her fingers.

"Mr Beinenke, a pleasure."

She was rather good at lying. Seamlessly, perfectly, she turned to his wife.

For this woman she immediately bore pity and not of the unkind variety either. The pity did not revolve around her appearance – though her frumpy yellow dress and hairstyle were desperately in need of some intervention – but around her evident sadness. Where her face was overly bright and smiling, her eyes were bleak and lifeless. Someone could have the saddest face but as long as their eyes glittered there was hope for reanimation, for reinvention and life again.

"I'm Alice."

From the tone of her voice it was made evident to Morticia that Alice appeared to have lost all of her glitter.

"Hello Alice," she smiled, "It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for the card and flowers."

"It was nothing," the woman's curls bounced around her neck as she spoke, "Thank you for having us."

The rest of the family were introduced, and their attempts to be normal where comical and disastrous in turn. Mamma excused herself to her dungeon, which didn't seem to appeal to their guests, and she had to pull Pubert to her side to prevent him from latching those shining little teeth onto Mr Beineke's leg after the man absently patted his head. Her son, after all, was just attempting to be friendly. Fester, in his typical style, didn't even try and when Thing came to say hello their guests were inexcusably rude. Then there was only one stranger remaining, the one on whom her husband's eyes were fixated. She had long ago decided that vanity and jealousy were brothers in arms in her husband, and both fought for dominance in his attitude.

"You must be Lucas," he finally said, as it if was a curse.

Morticia tensed, touched his arm, and then stepped forward. The young boy took a step forward too, like a criminal who was inexplicably drawn to his own gallows. Such was the power Morticia seemed to exercise over all men.

"Hello Lucas," she whispered, "Such a pleasure to meet you."

"Mother!"

The cry from the top of the stairs was all Lucas needed to snap his head towards the voice that had so chided the woman to whom he had been enraptured. Satisfied that he was genuinely interested in Wednesday, Morticia's calm at the boy's evident love for her child was short lived when she saw what her daughter had chosen to wear.

For a second it occurred to her she might not have chosen it at all. It might be that just behind her, in the shadows, an armed gunman was holding her to ransom to wear the ludicrous garment in which she was now bedecked. How pleasant a thought. But no, Wednesday would have murdered him before he had the chance to enforce such horror. There was only one possible explanation but it was the one she most feared.

Her daughter ran down the stairs and the only noise breaking the shocked silence was Pugsley's perverse chuckles of disbelief. Amidst the singular laughter she ran towards Lucas, whose arms were open.

Greeting him with a chaste hug, she pulled him toward the stairs, "Come on. Ring when dinner's ready."

Gomez put a quick hand on her shoulder, fingers grazing noisily across the cheap cerise material, saying nothing about the garment apart from, "Paloma…"

"Father!"

He shook his head. Morticia felt like screaming, just for a moment, out of sheer frustration at being locked out of whatever secret was passing between them. Then she felt herself swallow the urge as she did every time. She had tenacity; it would be enough to get her through this conflict which was building around her.

She watched as Wednesday and Lucas disappeared at the turn of the stairs and into east wing of the house.

"You kids leave the door open!"

The utter banality of the call for chastity from the love-sick young adults shattered the fury inside her to the point where she felt stupid for such anger – Gomez would never do anything beyond trying to solve an issue or problem so it wouldn't upset her. She swallowed her irrationality then too.

She looked at the Mr Beineke but had no time to respond as her husband laughed richly.

"Aha! Don't worry Mal – I can call you Mal? – my daughter has a variety of weapons that will no doubt have your boy running for his life should he try anything," he smiled but he was deadly serious.

And her husband was naïve.

"We had heard she owned a crossbow," Alice said lightly, drowning any opportunity her own husband was about to take to respond.

"A gift from her mother," Gomez came towards her, cupped her face in his hands, "She always knows how to please."

She cocked her eye brow at him as he pulled her mouth towards his. The world stopped to pay homage to the gentleness of his kiss, the love he poured into it. Taking her full weight, slight as she was, in his arms he curled her back and trailed his lips down the line of her neck.

She recalled vaguely being angry at him before and then remembered their guests and her hand tapped his shoulder in spite of her wish to simply disappear into his world of pleasure and indulgence and excitement and joy.

"Gomez, we have guests," she offered as a half-hearted protest.

Still holding her, he turned his face towards the guests, and in particular Mr Beineke, "You must understand… I just can't resist her."

Their faces were white with astonishment. As she straightened up, she was tempted to comment on how it suited them but then she had decided that it just wasn't mannerly.

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