“A boy had a worksheet,” Emily said. She hung her coat on the peg that had been hers since she was twelve, the peg still a little low. “His mother didn’t want notes from the coffee. Then she did. I sat down. I told them about the degree, and about you, and about the letter from the college. I hope you don’t mind being a paragraph in a stranger’s afternoon.”
“I have been a paragraph in worse places,” he said. He turned the burner off with the care of a person for whom knobs had once been traitors. “Was the boy kind?”
“He was eleven and exact. He thought he was stupid because he had copied a remainder that couldn’t exist. He isn’t stupid.”
“Neither are you,” Thomas said. “You get a look, when you forget that. Like you’re trying to pay for a meal with the wrong currency and you’re embarrassed to admit the wallet’s in your other coat.” He set two bowls on the table. The bowls were the blue ones her mother had bought at a church sale and defended against all aesthetic objections. “Eat. Then you can tell me if you’re going to do something about the look, or if you’re going to sweep the walk and call that a decision.”