Chapter 13: Getting to Know Tam
Mary had been watching Tam Nguyen all through dinner with the focused subtlety of a woman who believed she was being subtle.
She wasn't being subtle.
She'd tracked every bite he took, every time he glanced around the table, every exchange between him and Sheldon. She was building a profile. Tam, to his credit, seemed to sense the observation without being able to identify its source, which made him sit slightly straighter and choose his words a little more carefully than a twelve-year-old typically would at someone else's dinner table.
When she saw him lean over and murmur something to Sheldon, her expression shifted — just barely, just enough for the people who knew her to notice.
She reached under the table and pinched George's arm.
George, who had been peacefully drinking his beer and staying out of everything, flinched. "What—"
Mary tilted her head toward Sheldon and Tam without moving anything else on her face.
George looked. Saw two boys whispering. Looked back at Mary. Received no further information.
He defaulted to his standard move in unclear situations, which was to be friendly and hope for the best.
"Tam," he said, in the easy voice of a man who coached teenagers for a living. "How long have you been in Deford?"
Tam looked up. He had the careful eyes of someone who had learned to read rooms quickly. "About three years, sir. My family moved here from Houston."
"Houston to Deford," George said. "That's a change of pace."
"Yes, sir."
George nodded. He was about to ask something else — something about Houston, something about Tam's family, following the natural thread of the conversation — when something surfaced in his memory. A thing from his own past that connected to what Tam had just told him, the way certain memories connect to certain words, pulling them up without permission.
He opened his mouth.
Connie, from the other end of the table, said: "George."
Just the name. Clear and direct.
George stopped. Looked at her.
"I'm out of beer," Connie said, holding up her empty bottle with the serenity of a woman who was not, in fact, out of beer — she had half a bottle left. "Would you mind?"
George looked at the bottle. Looked at Connie. Received the message, even if he couldn't have explained exactly what it was.
"Sure," he said, and pushed back from the table.
Under the table, out of sight, Mike extended one hand toward Connie and gave her a quiet thumbs-up.
Connie caught it in her peripheral vision and kept her expression perfectly even.
Across the table, Mary was recalibrating her approach to Tam. She'd gotten Houston, three years, family in Deford. She needed more, and she needed it to not look like what it was.
Before she could arrange her next question, Mike spoke.
"Tam," he said, with the easy tone of someone making conversation rather than conducting an interview. "What are you into? Besides rockets."
Tam blinked. The shift from Mary's careful attention to Mike's direct, uncomplicated question seemed to reset something. He sat back a quarter inch.
"Math, mostly," he said. "Physics. I've been building a telescope — nothing complicated, just a Newtonian reflector — and I want to get it good enough to track Jupiter's moons."
"From your backyard?"
"Light pollution's not too bad on the east side of town. It's manageable."
"That's actually cool," Mike said, and meant it in the way that was obvious when someone meant it.
Tam looked at him for a moment — the look of someone recalibrating an expectation. He'd met Mike Quinn for the first time approximately three hours ago, at a dinner table where he'd shown up as Sheldon's guest and found himself the subject of a quiet parental investigation. Mike was, by any visible measure, the most effortlessly impressive person in the room. The fact that he was asking follow-up questions about a homemade Newtonian reflector with apparent genuine interest was not what Tam had been prepared for.
He kept talking.
Mike asked the right questions — not showing off what he knew, just enough to show he was following. Where the mirror was sourced. What focal length Tam was working with. Whether the mount was alt-az or equatorial.
The conversation found a natural rhythm. Tam's shoulders came down. The careful, slightly formal quality he'd walked in with loosened by degrees.
At some point, Sheldon joined in — because the telescope project was something he had opinions about, which meant it was something he was going to share those opinions about, social context notwithstanding.
The three of them talked.
Around them, the rest of the table's attention drifted to other conversations, the way attention does when the energy of a room shifts toward something genuine. George came back with the beer, set it in front of Connie, looked at the table, and quietly absorbed the fact that the evening had found its own level without him.
He sat down.
Drank his beer.
Decided that was good enough.
Mary, watching Tam gesture over something Sheldon had said — animated now, natural, the careful reserve completely gone — felt the tension she'd been carrying since she'd put out the good dishes quietly leave her shoulders.
She looked at Connie.
Connie raised her beer bottle slightly, without expression.
Mary looked away. But she was almost smiling.
Across town, at the Heron house, the dinner table held its own quieter drama.
Cady's parents — both of them — had noticed something different about their daughter the moment she came through the door. It wasn't loud. Cady wasn't loud. But she'd gone to her room and reorganized something, and she'd been humming, and she'd answered "how was school" at dinner with an actual answer instead of the careful, contained responses she'd been giving for two weeks.
"I made a friend," she said. "His name is Mike. He's in eleventh grade."
Her mother smiled. Her father, Dr. Heron, continued cutting his chicken with the studied calm of a man processing new information.
"Mike," he said. "Tell us about Mike."
"He's a transfer student. From Minnesota. He's really smart — he did this placement test today and just — anyway, he was nice. He let me sit with him at lunch even though he didn't have to, and he actually listened when I talked about Kenya." She paused. "He asked real questions."
Her father set down his knife and fork with the precision of a man who had spent years in the field and knew how to be patient.
"What grade did you say he was in?"
"Eleventh."
Dr. Heron picked up his fork again. "And his family—"
"Dad."
"I'm just asking—"
"We met today. At lunch. In the cafeteria. There was a whole — I bumped into his table and he caught my tray and we talked. That's it."
Dr. Heron looked at his wife with the expression of a man requesting backup.
Dr. Heron's wife — who had watched her daughter walk through their door this afternoon with something lighter in her face than had been there since they'd enrolled her at Medford High — looked back at him with the expression of a woman who was going to need him to choose his next words carefully.
"Cady," she said, calmly, "tell us how you met him. The whole thing."
Cady told the story — the tray, the table, the talking, the knee, the question about friends. Her face while she told it was the face of someone who had found something they hadn't known they were looking for and weren't quite sure yet what to do about it.
Her father watched her face and felt the specific complicated feeling of a parent watching their child's world expand in a direction they can't fully see.
He leaned toward his wife while Cady was still talking.
"She's never had a friend her own age," he said, low. "We don't know this kid. We don't know anything about him."
"She's also never come home from school smiling," his wife said, just as low.
He was quiet for a moment.
"We should meet him," he said.
"I agree."
"Casually. Not — we're not going to make it a thing."
"Of course not."
He cleared his throat. "Cady."
She looked up.
"Your mother and I are glad you had a good day." He paused, finding the phrasing. "If you'd like to bring Mike around sometime — just casually, show him your mother's collection, whatever — that'd be fine with us."
Cady looked at him with the particular look that children give parents when they can tell they're being managed but can't quite prove it.
"The collection," she said.
"You mentioned you told him about it."
"I did."
"Well. The offer stands." He picked up his fork again, signaling that the topic was over.
Cady looked at her plate.
"Maybe the weekend," she said, mostly to herself.
Her mother nodded once, neutrally.
Her father took a careful sip of water and did not allow himself to look relieved.
Back on Meadowlark Lane, the Cooper household was clearing dishes and settling into the comfortable low-activity of a dinner that had gone well.
Mike gathered his football gear from beside the front door and said his good-nights.
Sheldon and Tam were already in the garage — Sheldon's idea, Tam apparently willing — to look at whatever rocket project was currently in progress. They went past Mike with the focused energy of two people with somewhere to be.
At the door, Sheldon paused.
It was uncharacteristic enough that Mike noticed.
"You want to see the rocket?" Sheldon asked. His tone was the tone of someone extending an invitation while maintaining the posture of someone who didn't particularly care about the answer, which Mike was coming to understand was just how Sheldon's invitations worked.
"Not tonight," Mike said. "But — if there's any kind of propulsion system in there, do me a favor and take it outside. Far outside."
Sheldon considered this. "That's a reasonable precaution," he said, in the tone of someone filing it away without necessarily committing to it.
He and Tam disappeared into the garage.
Mike watched the door close.
He picked up his gear, walked across Meadowlark Lane in the warm Texas night, and let himself into Connie's house.
From the garage behind him, thirty seconds later, came the sound of something being moved to what he hoped was a safe distance.
He decided not to look back.
(End of Chapter 13)
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