“Hello,” I manage, stepping aside. “Please—come in.”
She enters with the quiet certainty of someone who doesn’t need to be guided through other people’s homes. Her gaze moves once across the living room, taking everything in as she walks to the couch and sits.
“Working?” She asks, looking at my laptop, which sits where I left it last night while editing.
“Yes,” I say, “Trying to get ahead before the weekend.”
She nods once. “Boston.”
It takes me a second to realize she knows.
“Yes,” I say, smiling a little. “The first game we’ll watch with Lenzin.”
“Good,” she says softly.
She looks at a notebook where Lucy has been practicing writing her name.
“You teach her to think,” she says.
“I try.”
Her gaze lifts to mine again. “That is harder than teaching them to repeat.”
I laugh quietly. “You’re not wrong.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
She folds her hands in her lap, “Please sit for a moment.”
I sit across from her. “I don’t think Lenzin knew you were in the States.”
“Neither do his parents,” she replies and looks at a photo of the team on the mantel. “You watch him play.”
“Every chance I get.”
She studies me for a moment.
“When he was a boy,” she says slowly, “I watched him play.”
I lean back slightly, curious where this is going.
“He took a hit once,” she continues, “hard enough that everyone thought he would stay down.”
I smile. That part hasn’t changed.
“But he didn’t,” she says. “He stood up, finished the shift, and then checked to see if the smaller boy on his line was hurt.”
I can picture it perfectly. “That sounds like him.”
She nods. “My brother was like that.”
The words are simple, but something in the way she says them makes the room feel suddenly quieter.
“He stayed,” she says after a moment. “Not because he believed he was brave. Because someone had to remain where the doors were that people may need access to.”
I don’t interrupt.
“My mother used to say that strength is not the loudest man in the room,” she adds. “It is the one who does not move when everyone else is afraid.”
