Noah was at the kitchen table doing homework when I got home.
He had his tongue pressed to the corner of his mouth the way he did when something required his full concentration, pencil moving across the page in the careful deliberate strokes of someone who had decided his handwriting was going to be excellent and was working toward that goal with the same focused stubbornness he applied to everything he cared about. Sophia was at the counter making tea, her coat still on, which meant they had arrived recently and she had not yet decided whether she was staying.
She looked up when I came through the door.
“Well?” she said.
“Good,” I said. “Very good.”
She exhaled in the specific way she exhaled when she had been holding something for hours and had been given permission to put it down.
