Alistair studied him with the expression that arrived when something significant had been said simply.
"I know," he said.
"It's—" Tav stopped.
"What?"
"Better," Tav said. "Than not."
Alistair looked at him.
Then at the sea.
"Yes," he said. "Considerably."
They walked the rest of the cliff path quietly.
• • •
• • •
On the sixth day at the safe house, it rained.
The rain came in from the sea in the way of coastal rain: sideways, committed, the kind that didn't apologize for its own thoroughness. The windows showed a grey-white where the sea had been. The cliff path was visible as a dark line above nothing.
Inside: warm.
Tav sat on the sofa with his right arm free and his left in the sling that the physician had been very clear about, reading the testimony preparation documents from Naomi. He had read them twice. He was reading them a third time because the third pass usually revealed something the first two hadn't.
Alistair was at the table with the sketchbook.
He had been at the table with the sketchbook since breakfast. This was the drawing-with-time that he'd mentioned in the ambulance — the full-attention version, not the margin version.
Tav had been reading and being drawn simultaneously for three hours.
He had established, by quiet observation, that Alistair spent approximately equal time looking at him and looking at the page. The looking was the quality he'd had since the architecture seminar — not surveillance, the attention he wanted to understand rather than capture. The drawing was the result of the understanding.
He turned a page in the testimony documents.
"You're not reading that," Alistair said.
"I'm reading it thoroughly."
"You've read it twice already. You've turned the same page three times in the last forty minutes."
Tav studied the page.
"I'm doing a third pass," he said.
"You are sitting still while I draw you and occasionally turning a page to appear occupied," Alistair said. "I appreciate the effort."
Tav held his gaze.
Alistair was not looking up from the sketchbook. He was drawing like someone entirely absorbed in what they were doing.
"Is the rain going to stop?" Tav said.
"Probably not before evening," Alistair said. "The weather data suggests it's a full-day event." He turned the sketchbook slightly — adjustment for angle, not display. "Lucien has gone through most of Naomi's testimony questions."
