You seem confident about what Ferris can do. He's competent. I paid attention. You pay attention to everything, she said. I try to, he said.
The fire in the stove crackled softly. Toby turned over in his sleep and said something that wasn't words. The particular unconscious mumble of a child dreaming. And both of them heard it. And both of them looked at him with the specific attention of pe people who have been listening for that particular child's sounds for different lengths of time and with different histories.
And neither of them looked away for a long moment. Then Mara put both hands flat on the table and pushed herself up. I should move him, she said. He'll be stiff in the morning on that bench. I'll do it, Gideon said, already standing.
She watched him lift Toby the same way he'd lifted her on the first night, practically, carefully, without making anything of the weight or the difficulty. Toby didn't wake. He made the sound he made when he was deeply asleep. The small sigh that meant he was somewhere comfortable and knew it even in sleep. And Gideon carried him to the back room and came back.
He stood near the door. I'll check the ridge, he said. It's late. I know. He took his coat.
Habit. She watched him go. She stood in the middle of the cabin in the light of the stove and the lamp, and let the quiet settle around her. Not the tense quiet of the past week, the listening quiet, but a different kind. The kind that didn't require her to do anything with it.
Outside she heard his boots on the frozen ground. Moving in the direction of the south ridge, checking the same angles he'd checked every night, the habit of a man who had been alone with his vigilance for four years, and was not going to stop being careful just because tonight looked different. She didn't call him back. She went to the window and looked out. The ridge was dark and still and empty.
She stayed at the window until she saw him come back across the yard. And when he opened the door and came in and found her still there, he looked at her with an expression that was asking something. And she answered it by holding his gaze for a moment before she turned toward the back room. And neither of them said anything because neither of them needed to. Tomorrow there would be more word from Whitlock.