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“I have a good memory.”

“Tor.”

“It’s a factual statement.” Her eyes rested on the water. Her chest did something she had no category for. The blue cardigan was warm. The distance between them had measurably shrunk. She was not going to remark on any of this.

“I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Nothing required. I told you because you told me a true thing and I wasn’t going to leave it unanswered.”

“That’s —” She cut her eyes sideways at him. “That’s a very Tor way to handle a feeling.”

“It’s effective.”

“Is it. Jury’s still out.” His eyes went back to the water.

Mirelle laughed, short and surprised, and the tide pools pulsed brighter for a second. He studied them too, and she’d learned his face well enough now to read what was in it. She felt the distance between them, and how far it had shrunk from where it started. “For the record, the chapter I thought was closed? I’m revising.” He didn’t say anything, but his expression did something she didn’t yet have a name for, and didn’t need one.

They sat there for a while. The silence was the kind that didn’t need management. Mirelle picked up a piece of sea glass from the sand — smooth, frosted, the kind that had been in the water long enough to forget its original shape — and turned it over in her hands. “What do you actually want?” she asked. “Not the situation. You. Generally.” He picked up a flat stone. Turned it over. “I’m thinking.”

“Take your time. I have sea glass.”

The ocean ran. A shorebird worked the tideline. Then he went on. “My family measured love by competence. You were safe if you were useful. You were loved if you were capable. I learned to speak that language fluently, then spent thirty years believing it was the only one.”

“What made you learn otherwise?”

“I haven’t. Not all the way.” The stone turned. “I built something functional. Solid structure. Nothing that required more from me than I’d already allocated. Efficient.” His eyes dropped to the stone in his hand. “Unsatisfying, as it turns out. The second part only landed recently.”

“About five weeks ago.”

“The timing is not lost on me.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were about to say several things.”

“I was exercising restraint.”

“It was visible.” She laughed again. The tide pools brightened. “What do you want instead of the efficient and unsatisfying?” A swell moved against the wind, from the wrong direction, warmer near shore than it had any right to be in October. Neither of them said a word about it.

“This, possibly.” He set the stone down. “I’m still working out the parameters.”

“Everything is a parameter with you.”

“Assessment is how I operate.”

“Has it worked?”

He turned to face her. She met it. “Ask me in a month.”

“That is the most honest thing you’ve said all morning.”

“I’ve been honest all morning.”

“You’ve been accurate. It’s adjacent, but not identical.” Her eyes dropped to the warm water around her boot heels. The tide pools at the south end were fully luminescent now, bioluminescent in broad October daylight, which was not something that happened. They both pretended it hadn’t. “For the record, my assessment is ongoing. I’m not ready for parameters. But I’m not not ready either.”

“That’s a lot of nots.”

“It’s an accurate sentence.” The line between his brows eased, barely perceptible, and his gaze returned to the water before she could read whatever had crossed his face. She turned her own eyes back to the horizon. The tide crept in while they talked. The dry sand they’d been sitting on was less dry now, the ocean asserting its dominance. At some point, they’d both shifted slightly, and the gap between them was — it was not where it had started. She registered his arm six inches from hers, his shoulder, and him, quiet, waiting. “The tide is coming in.”