Page 274 of What We Brave
He's fine. He worked ten hours. He's talking to David. That's good. That's progress.
I've been telling myself that all day. Hasn't made it true yet.
"I know."
"He's been up there all morning. Your dad's with him."
"I know, Reid."
She doesn't know. She's checking. The same way I've been checking — walking past the site every half hour, finding reasons to loop back. Making sure Blake's still there. Still present. Still holding together.
"I'm going to go see if Dad needs anything," she says, standing up, brushing off her shorts.
"Laine."
She looks at me.
"He chased you off the ladder this morning." Blake did not like her anywhere near the sharp tin. He sure as hell didn't want her on the roof. Yeah, he's pissed, but that love, that protection is a part of who he is.
Doesn't matter how angry he is.
"He didn'tchaseme?—"
"He physically blocked the ladder and told you to get down."
"I was helping."
"You were three rungs up and he looked like he was going to have a cardiac event. The man doesn't want you on the ladder."
She crosses her arms. "That's not his decision."
"No. But it is his blood pressure. Go easy."
She makes a face at me — the scrunched nose thing — and heads toward the site. I watch her go. Track her across the open ground until she's close enough that I can see Blake clock her from the scaffolding. His head turns. Just slightly. Then back to the beam he's working on.
He knows where she is. He always knows.
I go back to the weaving. Make four more terrible passes. The littlegirl corrects me twice. Rosa takes pity and basically does my row for me while I hold the shuttle and pretend to contribute.
The afternoon stretches out the way afternoons do in places like this — unhurried, warm, filled with small events that feel big when there's nowhere else to be. A chicken gets loose and three kids chase it between buildings. Someone's radio plays music from an open window. Carlos appears with a wheelbarrow full of something and whistles his way across the village like he's got the best job in the world.
Maybe he does.
I end up on the ground near the community center with a kid on each side of me and a third sitting in my lap. The one in my lap — maybe four, with a mop of black hair and a runny nose — fell off a low wall about twenty minutes ago and scraped his knee. Nothing serious. Didn't even break the skin, really. But he cried like the world was ending, and I was right there, and?—
This is what I do. Not the medical part. The scrape barely needed attention. It's the other thing. The hey, buddy, let me see, you're okay, I've got you thing. The thing where a scared kid stops crying because someone's voice is calm and their hands are steady and they act like everything is going to be fine.
I do that at work. Dozens of times a shift. Strangers. Their worst day. I show up, I stabilize, I transport, I hand them off.
But this is different. These aren't strangers. This whole village — Laine's parents, Carlos, Rosa, the gap-toothed girl, this kid with the runny nose — they matter because Laine matters. And Blake matters. And taking care of the people they care about is something I can do that doesn't require a rig or a uniform or a protocol.
Emotional caretaking. Laine's phrase, not mine. She said it a few weeks ago when I brought her tea without her asking. I thought she was being dramatic.
Maybe she wasn't.
The kid in my lap has stopped crying and is now systematically pulling fistfuls of grass and placing them on my knee. One clump at a time. Very deliberate. I let him. The kid clearly has a plan, and who am I to interfere with that kind of vision?
From here I can see the job site. Blake's on the ground now, crouched next to a beam he pulled down, running his hand along the grain. David's next to him. David's pointing at something. Blake's nodding. Then Blake says something and David leans back on his heels and laughs.
