“Did you ever wish you could be normal?” she asked. “Did you ever wish your talent away?”
“And miss the chance to lift those pesky elephants?”
She smiled at that and turned around to look at him. “No doubts, then?”
“Maybe when I was young. I suppose you’ve considered it. I didn’t realize that.”
“At times. I… I want to control it, but sometimes I want it gone.”
“You or others?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
“It’s an important distinction.”
Nina sighed. “Certain days I believe that it might be easier to be like any other, ordinary lady.”
Hector held both her hands between his and smiled down at her. “Nina, you can never be ordinary.”
The warmth of his gesture was both genuine and unexpected, and it startled them both. There was a distance, a bracketing of their emotions, that held them at bay. When either of them breached the line that separated them, it was uncomfortable.
They could speak now, they could even smile at each other, but the wounds were there. These were not old battle scars, but fresh lines upon the flesh. They might mend, one day.
“It seems I also can’t be a lady,” she said, sounding nervous. She turned away from him, and her eyes alighted on the boxes of insects he’d left strewn across his desk. She drifted toward them, picking one up and examining its contents. “More beetles,” she said.
“I did say I bought twenty,” he replied, standing next to the desk and glancing down at the boxes, then back at her.
“But there are so many here. Your numbers don’t add up.”
“I bought a few more,” he admitted.
He’d bought a few books, too, trying to determine exactly what he was looking at.
“Are you purchasing them in bulk now?”
“I’m starting to appreciate the beauty of insects.”
“You say that to make me happy.”
“I do not say things merely to please you,” he replied, rather serious.
“But you didn’t care about them before,” she countered.
“A man may change his mind.”
Again she appeared guarded, silence stretching between them. The discomfort of neither knowing their place, or proper role.
“I won’t ask you why you’ve come to see me today, but you may always tell me what you are thinking,” he told her.
Her eyes flicked to him but they were interrupted before she could speak.
“Hector, a word with you?” Mr. Dufren asked. He was standing at the entrance with papers in his hands. Hector had left the door wide open, thinking it would be less unseemly that way. Nina was an unmarried lady, after all. Appearances mattered. The open door, however, invited conversation from others, like now, Dufren awaiting him.
“I’ll be back soon,” Hector told her.
“Soon” turned out to be closer to fifteen minutes. When he returned and walked in, he saw Nina had moved behind his desk and was looking at his books, her fingers drifting across the spines, like a musician teasing the strings of a guitar.
She stepped back and made a book drift toward her, opening it as if it were a fan, the pages making a soft rustling sound.
