Yes," he says simply.
"And I am — I am not going to forgive that today. Maybe not for a long time."
"You don't have to," he says. "Forgiveness is not a thing anyone can schedule for you."
I look at him. He is looking back at me now, from the window, and the afternoon light is doing the thing it did last night in the ward — falling across the side of his face at an angle that makes him look like a different version of himself, or the same version from an angle I am still learning.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"You asked me that this morning," he says. "I believe the answer was yes then and it is yes now."
"When did you decide," I say, "to be someone I could trust?"
The question lands in the room and sits there. I watch Varder receive it — watch him not look away, not give me the composed non-answer he would have given me two weeks ago — and I watch him think about it honestly the way he has been thinking about things honestly for the past two days.
