"You're early."
"By ten minutes. There's chicken in the fridge, if that works for you."
"Oh yes, it works!"
She sets the textbook on the coffee table and follows me into the kitchen, takes the stool at the counter without asking. I get the chicken out, the pan on, the onion under the knife.
"How was your day?" I ask while keeping my eyes on the task at hand.
"Productive. Finished the chapter I was on. The advisor call went better than I'd been bracing for. Yours?"
"Long."
"That isn't an answer, Kane."
"It's the one I have." I work the onion for a beat. "In before sunup. Work's stacking up faster than the crew can clear it."
"You guys are good. People notice."
I look up from the onion long enough to let her see I heard it. It's the only thanks I have in me, and she takes it for what it is. She rests her chin on her hand and watches me work.
"Can I ask you something about Danny?"
I scrape the onion off the board into the pan. "You can ask."
"What was he like as a soldier?"
I take my time with it. Nobody has asked me about Danny in years, and his name still grips my chest every time. I don't let it show.
"The best of us. He kept the whole unit upright on the days that should have broken us. If a man was down, Danny got there before anybody had to ask. He made the worst rooms lighter just by walking into them."
"That's him." Her voice catches on it. "That's exactly him."
"Yeah. That was him."
We let the good version of him sit there between us. It's the first time in years I've talked about Danny without it ending at how he died, and I don't tell her what that's worth to me.
I cook, and we eat at the table. She tells me about Danny teaching her to bait a hook when she was eight, a whole summer of it at a lake I never heard him name. I can't picture it without seeing him at twenty in fatigues, because that's the only Danny I have. She catches whatever crosses my face.
"Where'd you go just now?"
"I never knew the boy. I only got the man."
So she gives me the rest of the story, the worm she refused to touch and Danny baiting the hook for her ten times over before she'd do it herself, until I can picture the patient kid she's drawing, a version of him I never got to meet.
When she's done I ask her about her grandmother. She tells me the whole story straight, the long sickness, the toll on both of them, no edges sanded off for me. I listen and keep my mouth shut. The easy things people say are the last thing she needs.
She gets through half her chicken before she puts her fork down.
"Can I ask you a real question without it being a problem?"
"You can ask. I'll tell you whether it's a problem after."
"Are you sleeping at all?"
"Some."
"Liar."
