She looked at him.
He looked at her.
The system on the windowsill was entirely still and entirely silent.
"I don't know the steps," she said again. "But I know this is the direction."
"Yes," he said.
"So we figure out the steps," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Together," she said.
He looked at her.
Something moved through his expression — the warm thing, the real one, and underneath it something larger and quieter that had been living in him for a long time and was being allowed, finally, to be exactly what it was.
"Together," he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she reached across and picked up the working list.
Turned it over.
On the back, beside the line that said 'tell him you want him here' — which now said 'Three days. Two if the road is clear.' — she wrote:
'He is here.'
Set the pen down.
Looked at what she'd written.
Turned it back over.
Put it on the corner of the table where it lived.
The working list had twenty items.
