Not directly.
Those pieces had to be noticed.
Or earned.
Or maybe they were given so carefully I didn’t always realize what they were until later.
The first time I asked him a question that wasn’t about the tanks, I almost backed out halfway through.
We were watching the ghost shark move through dim water like a half-remembered dream. Her body cut through the blue-black with that strange, delicate grace she had, all cartilage and shadow and ancient softness.
Tobias stood beside me with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Ben said you bought the estate because of the ocean,” I said.
And for one awful second when Tobias didn’t respond, I thought I’d crossed a line.
But then he said, “Yes, I didn’t like living inland. The air felt wrong.”
I looked at him.
His eyes were on the tank, the ghost shark reflected faintly in his glasses.
That was such a strange answer. Such a Tobias answer.
And yet, somehow I understood it perfectly.
“Too still?” I asked.
His gaze shifted to me then. “Yes.”
After that, it became easier.
Not easy, but easier.
Sometimes I asked small things. What made him choose a certain species. How old he’d been when he set up his first tank. Whether he actually liked coffee or just drank it because it was efficient.
He answered most of them.
Sometimes with a sentence.
Sometimes with one word.
Sometimes with a look that made me realize I’d asked the wrong version of the question, and if I tried again from a different angle, he might give me more.
I was learning him the way I learned difficult systems—slowly and carefully, without assuming the first reading told the whole truth.
And he was learning me too.
He knew I hated phone calls, and that sometimes I forget to drink water when I was too deep into observation.
He knew I’d talk myself out of suggesting a change if I thought it might create extra work for someone else, so he’d started asking, very directly, “What would you do if resources were not a concern?”
Which was such an unfair question, because resources were always a concern.
Except, apparently, here.
Here, if I said a system needed a redesigned return line, Tobias said, “Then redesign it.” If I said the cuttlefish needed more enrichment variety, three suppliers had been contacted by the next morning. If I said the sea snake enclosure would benefit from a different lighting gradient, he had the current system mapped out and ready for adjustment before lunch.
