Her voice changed for that line, and she means every word of it. From a girl this sharp, I'd expect nothing less.
***
At the small kitchen table we eat the bowl of leftover stew Mama Lou sent home with us, across from each other. She asks about the house, when I bought it, from whom. I tell her about the widow who'd lived here forty years before she moved closer to her daughter in Bozeman.
She nods over a spoonful and glances past me at the workbench. "Did you start the carving recently?"
"After I left the service. So no, not recently. My hands needed quieter work than they'd been doing."
"Do you sell any of it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't make them for anyone."
We've stayed on safe ground so far, and her questions are smart without being nosy. She knows where to stop pushing.
After we eat she carries her plate to the sink before I can get to it. She rinses both, sets them in the rack, dries her hands onthe towel hanging from the oven handle. The whole thing takes her a minute. She does it without thinking.
I stay at the table and tell myself I won't watch her. Fuck, who am I kidding. I'm watching every move she makes, and I couldn't look away if my life depended on it.
Danny's sister.
She walks down the hall and comes back with a textbook and a highlighter.
"Can I study in the living room?"
"You can do whatever you want in any room that isn't mine."
"Then I'm studying in the living room."
She goes. I take the folding knife out of my pocket, pick up a piece of pine from the workbench, and sit in my chair by the stove. She sits at the far end of the couch with one leg folded under her and the lamp on low. Six feet of floor between her end of the couch and my chair. Six feet too far. Six feet too close.
I work the knife while she turns the pages of her textbook. The piece in my hand is going to be a small bird. I don't decide that. The wood does.
She stops on a page and her eyes go to the side table next to her, where a small carved dog sits at the foot of the lamp. She picks it up, turns it in her fingers, and asks without looking up: "Did he ever tell you about my dog?"
"Caesar."
Her head comes up. "He told you about Caesar?!"
"He talked about him a lot. About the fence you built out of pallets when you were thirteen. About him sleeping on Danny's bed the week before he shipped, and not eating after Danny left."
I hear my own voice when I stop. I've said more in those three sentences than I meant to. Caesar was Danny's, given to me brother to brother in the dark of a tent at three in the morning, and I just used Caesar to bring her closer. That's not what I'm here to do.
She is looking at me with her book closed on her finger. There's a softness in her face I'm not prepared for.
"He told you a lot."
"He did."
I close my mouth before I give her more. The next thing in line is how Danny died, and I told her earlier that part would have to wait.
She doesn't turn a page for a long minute, keeping a silence I'm terrified she'll break with another question.
I don't look up from the bird until I'm sure she's reading again.
