But he was 9 years old, and he had been inside for 6 days and apparently had reached the limit of what he was willing to accept at in the name of medical recovery. He was sitting on the top step with his coat on and his sling correctly positioned and his breath making small clouds in the late afternoon air watching the barn door. When she came through it, he said, "Did it work? " She stopped. "What did you hear? " "Nothing," he said. I figured from how long you were gone and how you came back.
He paused. "Did it work? " "It worked," she said. He nodded once with the gravity of a person receiving confirmation of something they had chosen to believe in and are now vindicated for having believed. I told Hollis it would he said. He said probably.
I said definitely. You were right, she said. She started up the porch steps. Tessa. She stopped on the second step.
He was looking at her with those careful eyes that had been cataloging her since the first day. The eyes that didn't offer anything prematurely and didn't withhold anything once they decided. Your hands, he said, from the blizzard. Are they okay now? Fully, she said.
No lasting damage. He looked at her hands for a moment as though verifying this independently. Then he looked back at her face. I was scared, he said. When Calder and EMTT brought you back and your hands were wrong.
I was scared. She sat down on the step beside him. He let her. That was the thing. He let her.
He didn't shift away or recalibrate his distance. He just sat with her on the step in the cold with their breath making separate clouds that mixed at the edges. I was a little scared, too, she said. You didn't look scared. I had things to do, she said.
Being scared and doing what needs doing aren't the same thing. You can be both at once. He thought about this with the thoroughess he brought to everything. Is that something you learned? The hard way, she said a few times.