He released a sad, little huff of incredulous laughter. “Oh, sure,” he said with a shake of his head. “Just give up the last comfort I have.”
“Or trade it,” she answered, her voice firm, “for something better.”
He shrugged, averting his eyes from his daughter. “Sand’s almost done.”
“Right,” she said, turning back to the range with a sigh. “Good. Go douse the fire and fish the eggs out to cool. Careful not to splash.”
She watched him. Noted that he did the little motion with his tongue out again in concentration.
Malcolm does that sometimes, she thought. When he was forced to do something manual rather than intellectual.
She wondered if she did too.
“Have you mentioned it?” she pressed, once the eggs were safely steaming on the table surface. “To the lads at the shipyard or anyone else?”
“Nay,” he said. “I try not to talk much at all, you know. These days.”
“I don’t know,” she reminded him. “That is why I came to ask. Shall we eat the fried eggs while we wait for the boiled ones to cool?”
She was grateful, even though it was only a single egg, to have something to prevent conversation for a moment. Just a moment. To regather her thoughts.
“I wish I had a gift to give you in return,” Ulysses said absently, blinking at the golden bounty of the fried yolk on his spoon. “I wasn’t prepared.”
“I do not need a gift,” she said reflexively, then she paused and frowned. “Anything you say of my mother is a gift, actually.”
He sighed. “It’s your right, not something I’d any business hoarding. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I can do that much.”
Finally, he took a bite.
And he paused, his chin giving a little wobble.
He took another bite.
And then finished the fried egg in three.
“See?” said Libba. “I told you so.”
“Your mam used to do that too,” he said with a chuckle.
“Do what?” Libba asked.
He gave her a lopsided grin and shook his head with a laugh. A real, honest-to-God belly-deep laugh. “Ah, my Elizabeth. She always liked to say when she told me so.”
Chapter Thirty-One
For a longtime, Jasper stayed on that bench.
He wasn’t thinking, exactly. Certainly not ruminating in any deliberate or cohesive way. It felt, instead, like he was simply existing for a moment, before he’d be asked to think again. Or speak again.
And he wasn’t certain he could be trusted to do either.
When Malcolm appeared, just as the sun had begun its slow descent into dusky orange and pink rather than the high color of the afternoon, Jasper simply slid to the end of the thing and waited for the other man to sit next to him.
Mal watched him for a moment.
Jasper could feel the watching but did not turn to observe in kind. Not until his friend spoke.
“Well?” said Malcolm. “How bad was it?”
