(Sanya's POV)
"Thank you," I say. Because my mother raised me to say it. Because it costs nothing. Because the alternative is silence, and silence in this house seems to carry weight I'm not ready to measure.
He nods. A single, sharp dip of the chin. Then he turns and walks to the door, and his stride is the stride of a man who has accomplished the first task of his morning and is already moving to the next.
He stops at the threshold.
"Breakfast is at seven fifteen." He doesn't turn around. "Dress well. My mother notices."
The door closes.
I stand barefoot on the cold floor and I press my hands together — press them hard, palm to palm, the way you do when you need to feel something solid — and I think about what just happened.
A man knelt for me. Put his hands on the floor for me. C
