"That's not what I asked either." Eleanor's voice was gentle, but it carried the particular steadiness Ren remembered from childhood. The voice her grandmother used when she wanted a real answer instead of a comfortable one. "How did it feel, watching him do that?"
Ren was quiet a long moment.
"Like every part of me wanted to move," she admitted finally. "And I didn't."
"Why not?"
"Because moving the way I wanted to move would have ended his jaw, Grandma. Not his pride. His jaw."
She said it plainly, without drama. The way a person states a fact of physics.
"There's no undoing something like that. And I don't want to be the kind of person who breaks the things she's supposed to be protecting people from."
"That's a wise line to walk," Eleanor said. "I raised your mother, and I helped raise you, in a family that has never once run from a fight worth having. But I also taught you, when you were 7 years old and some boy pulled your hair on the playground, that there's a difference between courage and cruelty. Do you remember what I told you?"
"You don't need to win," Ren said softly. "You need to hold on to who you are."
"That's right." Eleanor squeezed her hand. "Whoever this boy is, he's going to keep pushing until he finds the bottom of you. Everyone like that does. They can't help it. It's the only way they know how to measure themselves. Against how far they can push someone quieter than they are."
"I know his type," Ren said. "I served with men who thought volume was the same thing as strength. Most of them washed out in the first two weeks."
"And the ones who didn't wash out?"
"The ones who didn't wash out learned, eventually, that real strength doesn't need anybody watching to know it's true."
Ren looked down at their joined hands.
"I'm just tired of being underestimated, Grandma. Some days it's almost funny. Other days it isn't."
"Let it be funny more than it isn't," Eleanor said, with the ghost of a smile. "Bitterness is heavy, sweetheart. I carried some once, a long time ago, after your grandfather passed, and it near about broke my back before I finally set it down. Don't pick it up on my account. Or Danny's. Or anybody's."
"I'll try."
"Trying's all any of us can promise." Eleanor patted her hand and reached back for her book. "Now go home. You look like you haven't slept right in a week. And don't argue with a woman who spent four decades reading exhaustion off a person's face for a living, long before you ever needed her to."
Ren stood, leaned down, and kissed her grandmother's forehead.
"I love you, Grandma."
"I love you, too. And, Ren?" Eleanor caught her wrist gently before she could pull away. "Whatever's coming with that boy, I trust you to know the difference between defending yourself and destroying him. You've always known that difference, even when the world made it hard to remember. I raised you to remember it anyway."
Ren nodded, throat too tight to answer, and stepped out into the hallway.
She walked the last two blocks home instead of waiting for the bus, needing the cold evening air on her face.