Beside her, Danny stopped rocking.
She kept humming. She didn't open her eyes. She heard the cardboard pages of the train book turning, one, two, three, slowly, in order, up through six. A pause. Then a seventh page.
She opened her eyes.
Danny was holding the book out toward her. Not looking at her—looking at the dryers—but holding it out across the space between their chairs, open to page seven. The red caboose. Mended across the middle, very carefully, with Scotch tape gone yellow and brittle with age. Tucked into the fold of the page was a small florist's card, its edges soft with handling, that said in a stranger's neat hand: Happy birthday, Danny. Love, Cee.
"Cee," said Danny, to the dryers.
She took the book. She held it on her knees, open to page seven, very carefully, with both hands flat, and she sat beside her brother in the warm laundry room and hummed, and he hummed too, and the dryers turned and turned.
She stayed until dinner. She came back the next day. She came back the weekend after that, and the one after that.
* * *
In May, Theo Hale went back to Boston for his six-month checkup, and Open Sky Mission Flights flew him.
It was a clear, bright morning in Des Moines, the kind that made the whole sky look scrubbed. The fireplace in the private terminal was still not lit. The bowl of green apples was still uneaten. The television showed the weather with the sound off: sunny all the way to the coast.
Celeste Varga was sitting on the carpet between two leather armchairs.