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“I haven’t given up.”
“You’ve found the answer then?”
My face must say it all because he leans back in a similar fashion to my own. This is the most relaxed I’ve ever seen the man. Usually, like his son, he’s all sharp lines and pointed boundaries.
“I’ve never been in this room,” he muses suddenly.
How’d you know I’d be here then?
“Why come here now then?”
“Why not now?” he asks, and I can tell he’s goading me.
I let him.
Shrugging, I downplay my curiosity. “Isn’t it your job to know it all? Were you,”—I pause for theatrics, not because I’m uncertain—“afraid?”
His bald head gleans as he arches his head back on a laugh, and something tells me this doesn’t happen often. “Afraid? Of what?”
I lift another shoulder, gripping my knee. “I don’t know, you tell me.”
Sgt. Daniels’s mouth quirks. “Tell you that these walls only act as a shield from the elements outside? Plants, flowers, they all flourish fine in nature, in the sunshine that isn’t protected by glass walls.”
“Are you saying they’re trapped?”
“I’m saying that you’re shielding them. They’re secure as long as they stay here, restricted but guarded.”
My face contorts. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“You’re right, it’s not. There’s nothing wrong with leaving the comforts of our safety, but sometimes when we push past barriers, the world opens back up. Rewards us for trying.”
In a roundabout way, is he talking about me avoiding going back to the hospital? I’m not sure if I should be grateful or agitated by his unfounded insight.
I never asked for it either way.
Bending forward he starts to clean up my mess before I mutter, “Leave them.”
Looking at me a second too long, his nod is as clipped as it is formal, and I know in some twisted way I’d been set up. He was testing me, but I’d chosen correctly.
He’s almost disappeared back out the way he came, but he halts. The faint curl of his lip rises as quickly as it falls back.
My spine tingles with awareness at the less-than-whole expression. He’s looking at a group of flowers. The bluish-purple color unique but not any less dazzling.
“Sometimes I wonder how we miss answers so plainly hidden in sight.”
“Maybe it’s not always about whether or not the truth is visible but if we’re willing to look,” I say back just before he exits.
I swear I hear his smirk of approval.
Only after he’s gone do I chance to take my eyes away from where he left and follow where they’d arched higher a moment after my comment.
A small crack rests in one of the panels. The roots are thick and plenty where the flower pushed through despite the thickness of glass around it.
Checking the time on my phone, I concede it’s time to spread my roots as well. To take a chance and be strong. Sure, I could be crushed all over again, but safety is for the comfortable. I’ve never known either of those things.
Obstacles are the only barriers that haven’t been tried yet.
It’s time to face mine, to see him.
