Aaron looked down at the book as though he might hide inside it if he stared hard enough.
Rowan stood there a moment longer, held between instinct and effort. The instinct was to ask what he was reading or whether Miss Harrow had assigned it. Small. Practical questions that would make the moment orderly.
But then, he thought of Emmeline at dinner. He thought of what she would say if she saw him now, standing before his son with all this silence between them. She would tell him to soften. To listen first. To offer warmth before correction.
He crossed the library and sat on the rug beside his son.
Aaron stared at him, eyes widening.
Rowan had not sat on a rug in years. The movement was inelegant, and his knee protested at once, which he chose to ignore. Biscuit opened both eyes this time, lifted his head, and gave Rowan a suspicious look.
Rowan looked at the dog. “Settle yourself.”
Biscuit put his head back down.
Aaron’s mouth twitched.
Rowan gestured to the book. “Continue.”
Aaron’s eyes widened. “Aloud?”
“If you like.”
“I was only p-practicing.”
“Then continue.”
Aaron looked at him for several long seconds, searching his face. Rowan held himself still, no matter how much he wished to fill the silence with something stern that did not terrify him as much as his son’s eyes on him.
At last, Aaron looked back at the page.
“Th-the sea was… was…” His stammer thickened immediately, the words catching under the pressure of being heard. His shoulders rose. “The s-sea was b-black as ink, and the w-wind…” He stopped.
Rowan felt the old impulse rise.
Tell him to start again.
He crushed it.
Aaron glanced at him from beneath his lashes, and Rowan made himself smile. It was small and awkward, likely more ofa grimace, but Aaron saw it, and his shoulders lowered by a fraction.
“The wind t-tore through the sails,” Aaron continued, still halting, still careful. “B-but Captain Morley did not tremble.”
“Brave man,” Rowan said quietly.
Aaron’s eyes brightened. “Very.”
He continued. The first paragraph came rough, uneven, filled with pauses and repetitions that made Rowan’s chest tighten each time the boy’s face flushed. But Rowan did not move. He kept his hands folded loosely over one knee, kept his expression calm, and listened as though there were nothing in the world more important than whether Captain Morley survived the fictional storm.
Slowly, Aaron changed.
His voice steadied by small degrees. The pauses grew shorter. His hand relaxed in Biscuit’s fur. Once, when a word caught hard on his tongue, he stopped, whispered “bark” under his breath so softly Rowan might have missed it if he had not been listening with every part of himself, and then tried again.
The word came.
Rowan’s throat tightened.
When Aaron reached the end of the chapter, he closed the book with both hands and looked down at it, breathing hard.
