"She had it the whole time," Garrick said. His voice was not quite steady. Yes, I thought I lost it with the rest of the room. Odora set the thimble on the table between them. He looked at it without touching it.
His hands were on the table, large and work scared and still, and she could see from the set of them that he was holding something in very carefully. She said she took it the morning after Elizabeth died. Odora said she didn't want it to go behind the locked door. He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice had gone rough in the way of a man who is not going to produce tears, but is in the vicinity of them against his will.
She was 10, he said. She was 10 years old and she was preserving. He stopped. She was 10 years old and she understood something about how much you were going to lock away. Odora said, "She said it gently, but she said it.
He received it without flinching. He had gotten better at that, at receiving true things from her without redirecting them. It was one of the changes she'd cataloged without quite naming. She's not afraid of loving Elizabeth and loving someone else at the same time. Odora said, "She did it tonight.
She put her mother's thimble in my hand and asked me to stay." She paused. She did what you've been unable to do. Garrick looked at her then directly, which he didn't always do. He was a man who looked at things slightly sideways when they mattered too much.
The way you look at a bright light, but he looked at her directly. I know. It's not a criticism. I know that, too. He looked at the thimble again.
She's 13. She's braver than I am. She's had a different relationship with the loss, Odora said. She grieved it every day. You stored it, he sat with that.
You told me to go, Odora said, not an accusation. Just the fact of it. Laid down between them where they could both look at it. Yes, I thought she stopped. Started again carefully.