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It sounded almost infantile to him.

Like he was waiting for his mom to pick him up from school.

Nani looked away from him and turned to look at the other woman.

Mari.

That’s what the older woman had called her.

Mari wasn’t looking at anyone.

She looked, at least to him, a little… lost.

He felt like a complete ass.

She’d only asked him a question.

A rather innocuous one given where they were.

People asked him that same question all the time.

They just didn’t tell him he looked lost.

That cut deep. Too deep.

A reality he didn’t want to reveal to anyone.

“Uh… Mister Derringer?”

Nani.

She was still there.

And his ride, well he knew that Pallas was still waiting for him at the curb.

He turned the cat over on his arm and got up from the chair. When he was a couple steps away from the woman, he held out the cat to her. “Mari?”

He didn’t expect much when he said her name.

Maybe a look.

A raised eyebrow.

He didn’t expect surprise.

He also didn’t expect to see a haunting similarity in her eyes.

The same look he saw in his bathroom mirror on the few times he caught sight of himself.

“I… I have to go.”

She nodded slowly and held her hands out.

He put the cat in her arms and pointed in the vague direction of the door. “My ride is here.”

He got a smile then.

“You don’t have to explain.”