She came in, slowly, and stopped at the edge of the rug. She was wearing the lanyard Jace had made her that gave her access to the rodeo grounds. Her jaw was set in that exact way Jace's jaw set when he was working hard not to show something.
"You're packing," she said.
"I am. But not because of you."
"Dad said something."
"Your dad and I have things to figure out between us. That's separate from you."
Her eyes tracked to the open bag, then back to me. I recognized the look. She was running the numbers, trying to find which version of this was the one she could have prevented.
"You taught me how to actually look," she said. "Not like — not just pointing it. Like, what to wait for." A beat. "I was going to show you what I got the other day."
I sat on the edge of the bed. "Show me."
She hesitated one more second. Then she crossed the room and held out the phone.
The shots from the rodeo grounds were better than anything she'd taken before. She'd found patience — that was the only word for it. A vendor counting change with her head bowed, the coins mid-fall. Two boys watching the chute gate from behind a fence post, one of them with his hat pressed flat to the rail. Long shadows on swept dirt.
"The coins," I said. "How long did you wait for that?"
"Like eight minutes." She almost smiled. "I nearly left twice."
"But you didn't."
"But I didn't."
I handed the phone back. "That's the whole thing, Rory. That's it."
She sat on the edge of the desk chair, carefully, like she was testing whether she was allowed. "I gave Dad the album," she said. "He hated it."
"I’m sure he didn't hate it." I doubted Jace would use that term, but his expression often said more than his carefully chosen words did.
"He started talking about zone safety."
"I’m sorry." I kept my voice level. "Sometimes people get something that's exactly right and they don't know where to put it. That doesn't mean it wasn't right."
She looked at her hands. "I wanted him to —" She stopped.
"I know what you wanted."
"He never just says something is good. He just says whether it was safe or not."
I thought about the workbench. The lockbox. Jace standing in that kitchen with his coffee going cold because he was more comfortable managing a situation than existing inside one.
"Can I show you something?" I pulled the album up on my laptop — she'd shared the file earlier in the week and I'd meant to print it for her. The printer in the corner was Ruby's, left behind with the apartment, small and sturdy and connected to my laptop by a cable I'd found in the drawer. "I was going to do this before I —" I stopped. "I want to do this with you."
She came and stood beside me.
We worked through it together. She'd captured him fourteen times and every single photograph was a different angle on the same truth — that Jace Walker was a man who expressed care through action, constant and unremarked, because he didn't have language for it any other way. We chose a better sequence, tightened the cover layout, and I printed it on the good card stock I kept in my gear bag for contact sheets.
When the last page came through the printer, Rory held it with both hands.
The stairs creaked again.
Jace filled the doorway the same way he filled most doorways. His shoulders were too broad and he stood too still. His eyes went straight to my bag on the bed. Something moved across his face and then went still again.
He looked at Rory.
