Then both quiet. The room quiet, joined now back again to the rest of the house. The one small eight-over-eight window laid in above the desk whickered against a sprung-up northeast wind. Both not moving, looking at each other as if newfound, without curiosity but as if cousins long separated but met now and knowing one another without even the burden of a handclasp. And for the only time in his life and he old enough to know it both eyes poured over with equal heartsaching to one another. And elastic time stretched and he thought he might die of love and thought that would be fitting. And in that moment his life as a melancholy man ended although none who knew him would ever know it or be able to claim it for him. But there then he left all that and began a new life, no less sad or sorrow-etched than the one before and so invisible. But he turned his back on God altogether and if any god noticed there was no way for Norman to know. Nothing was to change and all things were as they were before but he was to regard them from some minor and key distance from within himself. With the tolerance of knowing nothing may be changed and that what pattern lives does so outside of human desire or effort to afford change. He did not seek but still found pleasure in this and if no smile ran over him again it was because he needed none. All that fell around him was perfection and all that occurred was not. He expected nothing and so was pleased with many and diverse small things. Sitting that night in his small inconsequential office with the wind rising against the panes and his elder daughter across from him he sensed all this. And perhaps it was not this yet at all, perhaps it was only the first time in months that he found himself sitting fully in his chair, simply tired. Perhaps that, then, was enough. After a while he broke his gaze from her and took up his pipe and held it cold in the corner of his mouth and spoke to her.

“You ever going to tell me what happened with you and that boy?”

She cocked her head at him. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe I need to.”

This time he did not nod. Slowly he struck up a match and drew on the bowl. Then he said, “Well. There will be other boys.”

“No,” she said. “There won’t be.”

He said nothing.

After a time she said, “I’m a colored girl. Pretty and smart, but still.”

For longer this time he had nothing to say.