She'd heard. Something in her expression shifted a warmth that surfaced and then was carefully managed back into composure. She asked a lot of questions today about Gerald specifically. He sounds like a complicated fish. Gerald has layers.
It was a ridiculous exchange. It was absolutely nothing. Caleb laughed. Actually laughed. Not the short wrong laugh from the park, but a real one and felt like he'd used a muscle that had been locked up for a long time.
Natalie looked at him when he laughed. Just for a second. Then she looked at Ava. Same time in 2 weeks. We'll be here, Caleb said.
On the way to the elevator, Ava slipped her hand into his. He squeezed it. She squeezed back. Neither of them said anything. The sessions settled into a rhythm.
Every other Thursday, an hour, Caleb in the waiting room, Ava in the office. He'd bring work, sometimes paperwork, invoices, the administrative accumulation of a small professional life, and spread it across his knees and stare at it and do about 40% of what he'd intended. The other 60% he spent in the specific awareness of sound through a door. After the third session, Natalie started coming to the waiting room after Ava to give him a brief summary. not long, three or four minutes, what she'd observed, what they'd worked on. She'd stand near the door, arms slightly crossed, not defensive, he'd decided, just contained, and deliver the information in the efficient, precise language of a professional who didn't waste words.
He'd stand near the window, wait back on one foot, and listen. After the fourth session, he asked her a question. She drew another picture today. She wouldn't show me. She showed me a beat, a table, four chairs, people at them.
She hasn't decided who all of them are yet. He looked at her steadily. She has a very specific and slightly terrifying inner life. She's processing what she wants. Children her age often work through desire before they have the vocabulary for it.
The drawings are safe. Let her draw. I wasn't going to stop her. I know. A pause settled between them.
Not uncomfortable. the kind of pause that exists when two people have said the thing they meant to say and neither of them is in a hurry to fill the space. "She's getting better," Natalie said. "She's lighter than she was at the first session." Caleb exhaled slowly. "Yeah, I noticed."
"You're doing something right, Caleb." He looked at her. She was looking at Ava, who had found a children's magazine on the side table and was flipping through it with the dedicated focus she applied to everything. I'm mostly just trying not to get it wrong. He said that's all any of us can do.
He wanted to say something then. He wasn't sure what. The impulse was there, shapeless, pressing, completely inconvenient. But Ava looked up from her magazine and the moment passed and they said their professional goodbyes and went to the elevator. He started looking forward to Thursdays.