Or Malcolm is talking. Rhys appears to be listening with the patient quality of someone who has learned to let words happen around him without necessarily engaging with all of them.
Then Rhys says something.
Malcolm laughs an actual, full laugh, his head tipping back.
I didn't expect that.
"They've been out there for an hour," Finn says from behind me. "Malcolm was suspicious last night. This morning he went and found Rhys on the porch at sunrise and apparently that was enough to sort it out."
"Sort what out?"
"Malcolm's feelings about sharing." Finn says it neutrally. "He'll be fine, he just needed to adjust."
I watch them through the glass for another moment. Rhys notices me watching. He raises one hand in a brief acknowledgment. Not a wave exactly. Just a confirmation that he sees me.
I raise my coffee mug back.
***
Rhys brings me a blanket at nine-thirty.
I'm on the couch reading when he appears from the hallway with one of the thick ones from the linen closet folded over his arm. He holds it out.
"I'm not cold," I say.
He looks at the blanket, then at me, than sets it on the couch arm anyway and goes back to wherever he came from.
I look at the blanket for a minute, then I unfold it and put it over my legs.
At eleven he appears with an apple.
I'm at the kitchen table by this point, Finn across from me explaining something about registry documentation procedures that I asked about and am now slightly regretting asking about because Finn explaining things is thorough and detailed and my coffee has gone cold.
Rhys sets the apple next to my elbow without interrupting.
Finn doesn't miss a beat in his explanation.
I pick up the apple and look at it. Then I look at Rhys, who is already walking away.
"Does he do this with everyone?" I ask Finn.
Finn pauses his explanation. "Do what?"
"Bring things."
"Oh." Finn considers. "No. He mostly ignores everyone unless they talk to him first. Malcolm had to initiate seventeen conversations before Rhys started responding in full sentences."
"Seventeen?"
"He counted." Finn picks up his own coffee. "Rhys brought him a beer once, after month three. Malcolm nearly cried."
I look at the apple, then take a bite.
Lunch is a production.
Not because anyone planned a production, it just becomes one because there are five people in a cabin kitchen and four of them have opinions and one of them—Rhys—keeps keeps appearing at my elbow with things I didn't ask for.
A glass of water to replace the one I finished.
