“No.” A small, broken laugh. “You said yes to what I needed.”
We sat quietly. A breeze moved through the rosemary near the back steps, and the smell drifted around the porch.
“Your father would have liked this,” I said.
“Would he?”
“Not the way it happened. But the part where you came back and sat on the step.”
Trevor looked at his hands, rough now, with a blister healing at the base of one thumb. “
I got my twelve-month letter this week.”
“I know. Howard told me.”
“He said I passed.”
“You did.”
“I’m not sure I did it the right way. I wasn’t trying to earn the money. I stopped thinking about the money around month three.”
“That’s the right way,” I said.
He didn’t cry, and neither did I. We were not that kind of family. But after a while I reached over and set my hand on his shoulder, the way I used to when he was small and had a bad
dream, and he leaned, very slightly, into it.
