But there's nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Just time, stretching out endless in front of us.
Around noon, I remember the boxes in the hall closet.
"Here."
She turns from the window. I'm holding a cardboard box, lid askew, books spilling over the edges—paperbacks mostly, spines cracked from years of use.
I set the box on the table. "Might as well get some use out of them."
She crosses to the table, movements careful.
She pulls out a book, then another.The Count of Monte Cristo.Rebecca. A few thrillers, some literary stuff, a handful of romances with shirtless men on the covers.
"These are good." She sounds surprised. "Some of these are really good."
"Don't sound so shocked."
"I'm not—I just—" She pulls out another.East of Eden. Steinbeck. The spine is cracked in three places, pages yellowed with age. "You read Steinbeck? I didn't think—"
"That orcs could read?"
Her mouth snaps shut.
"Found them in the wall when I tore out the built-in." I watch her face. "They're not mine. But thanks for the vote of confidence."
She starts to protest. I cut her off.
"We're not supposed to have inner lives. Makes it easier."
"Easier for what?"
I hold her gaze. Let her see the anger I usually keep locked down.
"To not think about what they did to us."
The words hang there. She doesn't flinch from them. Doesn't rush to fill the silence with something that makes us both more comfortable.
She just stands there, holdingEast of Edenagainst her chest, and lets me be angry.
"I'm sorry," she says finally. "Not for asking. For... all of it."
"You didn't do anything."
"No. But my people did."
I don't know what to say to that. The camps took everything—our language, our dead, our right to exist. She can't give any of it back. But she's not pretending it didn't happen, either.
"Read your book," I say. "I've got shit to fix."
She sits down with the box. Starts sorting through titles with careful hands. I grab my tools and head for the kitchen—the cabinet hinge under the sink has been sticking since I moved in.
We don't talk. We don't need to.
***
The crash comes from the bathroom around two.
I'm on the kitchen floor, reinforcing the back door hinges, when I hear it. Something clattering. A muttered curse. Then a thud.
