"Best breakfast in the district," he said, with the absolute conviction of a man who had eaten there many times and was not speaking metaphorically. Sloan looked at both of them and understood that she was being offered something that was not technically about breakfast. "Okay," she said. "Okay," Caleb said. They walked out through the side door into the April morning, the three of them.
And the city was doing what cities do at 9:00 a.m. On a Friday when the weather has finally decided to cooperate, moving with purpose, generating its ordinary noise, carrying its ordinary weight. The trees on the street had that pale early green. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Somewhere nearby, a construction crew was running something loud.
Garrett led them north at a pace that suggested he had made this walk many times and had strong feelings about not rushing it. Caleb walked beside Sloan and didn't say anything for a half a block. Then Mia wants to know if you're coming to her science fair. Sloan looked at him. Excuse me.
She asked me last week if the loud shoes lady was coming to her science fair. He said his expression was carefully neutral, but something underneath it was not neutral at all. I told her I didn't know. She told me to find out. Sloan walked for a moment without answering.
When is it? 3 weeks. Thursday evening. She thought about her Thursday evenings and decided she did not currently care what was in her calendar on any of them. What's her project?
She built a model of how wind affects wing lift using a box fan and three cardboard shapes she cut out herself. He said it works. I've seen her run it 12 times. She knows about wing lift. She knows about everything.
Caleb said it's a significant problem. Garrett made a sound from slightly ahead of them that was unambiguously a laugh. Sloan walked in the April morning and thought about a girl in socks and pajama pants asking questions from a hallway and about uneven braids and about a man who had picked up his tools and walked out of a building with the particular dignity of someone who had decided long before that morning what he was worth and didn't need anyone else to confirm it. "Tell her I'll be there," Sloan said. Caleb nodded.