"Get appropriate support." A pause. "We're working on expanding what appropriate means."
I sit with that.
"Stay a few days," Tomlinson says. "See it working. Think about teaching here. It is a great place to work."
A knock at the door.
William Dalton comes in.
He sees me and his mouth shifts — not quite a smile, but the Dalton version of one, which I’ve learned over the years to read correctly. I stand. We meet halfway, shake hands, and hold it a beat longer than strictly necessary.
“You made it,” he says.
“The flight was unremarkable,” I say. “The cold was not.”
“I told you to pack properly.”
“I packed properly. Alaska has a different definition.”
Tomlinson is watching us with the expression of a man who has heard about this dynamic and is now experiencing it firsthand.
Dalton glances at him. “He gets worse in person.”
“I’ve been told I’m very manageable,” I say.
“Really?”
Dalton looks at me.
He looks the same and he doesn’t — the same precision, the same economy of movement, the same controlled surface I’ve known across years of letters and calls and the occasional very dinner. What’s different is underneath.
Something has settled.
Not contentment — Dalton has never been a contented man — but something anchored.
That’s the word that never quite fit before.
It does now.
He found his brother and maybe more from the feeling he is projecting.
"You look well," I say.
"You look cold," he says.
"I am cold. Your country is hostile."
"You're Danish. You have no standing to complain about cold."
"Danish cold is civilized. This feels personal."
Dalton looks at me.
"The position was filled," I say.
"Yes."
"You knew."
