Chapter 26 | A Worried Husband

Chapter 26: Chapter 26 | A Worried Husband

He sat there for a long time.

He didn’t knock on her door.

He didn’t say anything through the wall.

He just sat on the couch and felt her keep going and thought:

You don’t know I can feel this. You’re doing it completely alone in the dark and you haven’t told anyone and you won’t tell anyone until you’re certain and maybe not even then.

And it doesn’t matter.

It happened. I felt it. It happened.

He closed his eyes.

He pressed both palms to the cushion and stayed there until her rhythm finally slowed and deepened into rest.

She had fallen asleep still trying.

=======

Evening.

Kai started dinner.

Mira came out first, which was unusual — normally Shira was the earlier riser at mealtimes. Mira tapped her way to the table and sat and placed her whiteboard beside her bowl.

She wrote something before Kai had even plated the food.

Something happened today.

Kai looked at the board.

"What do you mean," he said carefully.

I don’t know what it was. But something shifted. I felt it.

Kai looked at her.

Mira’s face was its usual composed expression. But she was aimed directly at him in a way that meant she was paying close attention.

You felt it too, she wrote.

It was not a question.

Kai looked at the board.

He could lie. He could deflect. He could say he didn’t know what she was talking about.

He looked at Mira’s face.

"Yes," he said.

Mira held her marker.

She didn’t write anything for a moment.

Then: Is it good.

"Yes," Kai said. "It’s very good."

Mira lowered the board.

She was still.

Then she nodded, once. A small, deliberate nod. The kind that means I understand. That’s enough. I don’t need the details yet.

She picked up her spoon.

Shira came out a minute later.

She positioned herself at the table. She looked at her bowl. She looked at Kai. She looked at her bowl again.

Her right hand was resting in the brace on her lap.

She picked up her spoon with her left hand as she always did.

But then, slowly, she moved her right hand to the table.

She placed it flat on the surface.

And one finger — the index finger — pressed down.

Barely. Almost nothing.

But Kai felt it through the table. The nerve signal. 2.1% and climbing.

Shira felt it too.

She looked at her hand.

The expression on her face was one Kai had never seen from her.

Not the armor expression. Not the uncertain expression. Not even the rain expression from Chapter 6 — the unguarded one.

Something under all of those. Something that had been buried very deep for a very long time and had just moved.

She looked at her hand for three seconds.

Then she picked up her spoon with her left hand and started eating.

She didn’t say anything.

Mira had her head turned slightly toward Shira’s side of the table. She hadn’t heard anything. But she was paying attention.

The table was quiet.

Then Mira wrote something and slid the board to Kai without looking up from her bowl.

Kai read it and looked at Shira.

"Mira asks if you want the last of the rice," Kai said.

Shira looked at the pot on the counter.

"Yes," Shira said.

Kai got up and served her.

When he sat back down Mira was already eating again and Shira was looking at her bowl and the right hand was still on the table, pressed flat against the surface.

Still pressing.

Still sending the signal.

Still answering.

=======

After dinner.

After the dishes.

After Mira had gone to her room and the audio reader had started.

Kai knocked on Shira’s door.

"Come in," she said.

She was in bed. The brace was on the nightstand. The physio sheet was on the mattress beside her, open to the wrist extension page.

She looked at him when he came in.

He sat in the chair.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Then Shira said: "You knew."

It was not a question.

Kai said: "I felt it through the wall. The Nerve Sense ability."

Shira looked at the ceiling.

"When," she said.

"This afternoon," Kai said. "Around two. You were pressing it down and lifting it. You did it forty-seven times."

A silence.

"The system counted," Kai said.

Another silence.

"How long has it been there," Shira said. "The movement."

"Today is the first day," Kai said. "Before today it wasn’t there."

Shira looked at the ceiling.

She was very still in the way she got when something was too large to respond to immediately.

"Dr. Harlen said the trace Gift flicker wasn’t clinically significant," she said.

"Dr. Harlen was looking at the Gift channel," Kai said. "The finger is the nerve pathway. Different thing. Below the Gift. More fundamental."

Shira absorbed this.

"It’s one finger," she said.

"Yes," Kai said.

"Index finger. Right hand."

"Yes," Kai said.

"That’s not walking," she said. "It’s not even close to—"

"No," Kai said. "It’s not."

A silence.

"But it’s not nothing," Kai said.

Shira looked at the ceiling.

After a long time she said very quietly: "No. It’s not nothing."

The room was still.

Outside the window the city moved through its usual evening rhythms. Traffic. Someone two floors up. A distant sound from the street.

Kai sat in the chair.

Shira lay in the bed.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

Then Shira said: "Don’t tell Mira."

Kai looked at her.

"Not yet," Shira said. "I want — " She stopped. "I want to be sure first."

"Okay," Kai said.

"And don’t — " She paused again. The armor was slightly loose tonight. She was choosing words more carefully than usual because of it. "Don’t make it into something. Yet. Just let it be what it is."

"Okay," Kai said.

Shira looked at the ceiling.

"Thank you," she said.

The words came out the way they always did from her — faster than she intended, like they moved before she could evaluate them. But she didn’t take them back.

"You did the work," Kai said. "I just felt it."

Shira said nothing.

Kai stood up.

He moved the chair back to the corner and left the physio sheet where it was — on the mattress, where she could reach it.

At the door he paused.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I want to try the wrist extension again. Together this time."

A long pause.

"After breakfast," Shira said.

"After breakfast," Kai said.

He pulled the door shut.

======

In the hallway he stood for a moment.

Through Shira’s door — her rhythm. Slower now. Moving toward sleep. But underneath the settling-into-sleep quality there was something else. Something that had not been in her rhythm before today.

Something that felt like the very beginning of forward.

Through Mira’s door — the audio reader. And then, unmistakable now, the third time —

A note.

Half a second. Clean. Deliberate.

She stopped it immediately.

But she had done it again.

Kai stood in the hallway between both doors.

’Both of you,’ he thought. ’Same afternoon. Neither of you knowing about the other.’

He stood there for a long time.

Then he went to the couch and sat down and pressed his palm to the cushion and felt both rhythms until the apartment went quiet.

He opened his notebook.

He wrote:

Shira — index finger. Right hand. 47 times. 2.1% nerve signal where there was 0% this morning.

He looked at that line.

He wrote underneath it, smaller:

She said don’t make it into something yet. So I won’t. But I felt it. It happened. That’s enough.

He closed the notebook.

He put his phone on the floor.

He closed his eyes.

He was asleep before he meant to be.