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"You found him, you saved him." The father, still unsmiling, was speaking to Dance.
"We all did, yes."
"He kept you down there, in that basement?" he said to his son.
The boy nodded, not looking at either of them. "Wasn't so bad. Got cold a lot."
His mother said, "Caitlin told everybody what happened."
"She did?"
As if he were unable to control himself the father muttered, "You shouldn't a took the blame for--"
"Shhh," the mother hissed sharply. His brow furrowed but the man fell silent.
"What's going to happen to her?" Travis asked. "Caitlin?"
His mother said, "That's not our concern. We don't need to worry about that now." She looked at Dance. "Can we go home? Is it all right if we just go home?"
"We'll get a statement later. No need right now."
"Thank you," Travis said to Dance.
His father said the same and shook her hand.
"Oh, Travis. Here." Dance handed him a piece of paper.
"What's that?"
"It's somebody who wants you to call him."
"Who?"
"Jason Kepler."
"Who's that? . . . Oh, Stryker?" Travis blinked. "You know him?"
"He went looking for you, when you were missing. He helped us find you."
"He did?"
"He sure did. He said you'd never met him."
"Like, not in person, no."
"You only live five miles from each other."
"Yeah?" He gave a surprised smile.
"He wants to get together with you sometime."
He nodded with a curious expression on his face, as if the idea of meeting a synth world friend in the real was very strange indeed.
"Come on home, baby," his mother said. "I'll make a special dinner. Your brother can't wait to see you."
Sonia and Bob Brigham and their son walked back to the car. The father's arm rose and slipped around his son's shoulders. Briefly. Then it fell away. Kathryn Dance noted the tentative contact. She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.
Gestures, more honest than words.
