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“Sit back.”

“I am sitting.”

“You’re perched like the chair insulted your mother.”

I looked down.

Only the front half of me was technically on the chair. My feet were planted. My knees were bent under me, body already pitched toward the small room.

I moved back until my spine touched wood.

“There.”

“Good girl.”

The words settled over me.

They still did that. Weeks later, in a finished kitchen, over eggs and toast, with a state registration letter beside my elbow, they still found the place under my ribs where my whole body listened before my mind could prepare an objection.

Cash saw it.

He always saw it.

His smile changed. Less weapon, more warmth.

He tore the toast in half and gave me one piece.

“Small bites.”

“I know how to eat.”

“Your recent performance suggests you know how to make food disappear under deadline.”

“I’m excited.”

“I noticed.”

“She’s bringing Butterbean the cuddly cow.”

“So I heard.”

“And her pens. She has the watercolor ones.”

“So you told me last night.”

“And Boone made her snack boxes.”

“I watched him do it.”

“He cut the apples into rabbits.”

Cash’s mouth twitched. “Boone contains multitudes.”

I took a bite. A reasonable one.

He waited.

I chewed.