As he stood there, fiddling with the components on the work table, long clever fingers sorting through the wires and circuit boards, I realized why he didn’t want to look at me. Because during those “few days” he’d just mentioned, his wife and child had died. He’d lost everything, and still found it within himself to return to the labs, to the work that took up so much of his life.
Did I dare tell him that I was sorry? Or would he see that as a ploy, my way of trying to show him that I empathized with his losses? Because I did feel sorry for him then, seeing the slump of his shoulders, hearing the slightest tremor in his voice, the one I could tell he was trying so hard to conceal. I’d lost my whole family, true…but I’d never lost a child.
However, I guessed he wouldn’t want to hear word
