“Pain?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
Frustration reached him quickly.
“I don’t know.”
I gave him silence.
He pressed his fingers harder against his sternum.
“It feels like I’m expected somewhere.”
The specificity of it quieted me.
Noah watched my face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You thought of something.”
“I’m not certain.”
“Tell me anyway.”
I considered the signals we used around the yard.
The workshop could become impossibly loud. Engines. Sanders. Impact drivers. The travel lift. Wind hammering the broad metal doors. Years earlier, after Noah worked through lunch because he had not heard me calling, I began whistling for him.
Two short notes.
One long.
A pattern sharp enough to carry through machinery and weather.
He had mocked me for summoning him like an animal.
Then, one afternoon at the far end of Bellweather Marina, he had whistled the same pattern back.
After that, it belonged to us.
A way to say, Find me.
A way to answer, I’m here.
I had not used it since the accident.
I had not consciously chosen to stop. Grief had stripped habits from me until I did not notice they were gone.
Noah’s pulse moved visibly at his throat.
“What?” he asked again.
“We had a signal.”
