Chapter 6: The Morning Question

She did not let him in.

"Go home, Damian," Lena said through the door.

"I can't."

"Then go to your cousin's, or a hotel."

"Lena, I'm not leaving this step." His voice was low and level, and very close to the wood. "You don't have to open it. I'll be here."

"It's thirty degrees."

"Then I'll be cold."

She went back to the cot and sat on it with the blanket around her shoulders.

Phoebe's text lay on the screen.

He's so scared for you.

She did not answer it.

Every half hour she got up and looked through the gap in the blinds.

He sat on the stone step with his back against her door, his coat collar up, his head bent.

Once she saw him rub his hands together.

At four he was still there.

At six the sky went grey over the brownstones and a bus hissed past, and he had not moved.

Something in her gave way, and she hated it.

She unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Damian rose slowly, stiff from the cold.

There was frost on his shoulders.

He looked at her in her rumpled sweater and bare feet, and for a moment he forgot to say anything at all.

"Come in," Lena said. "You're making the street nervous."

He followed her into the shop.

She put the kettle on the hot plate by the sink, because her hands needed something to do.

He stood by the workbench with his hands hanging at his sides.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't. I'm not doing it for you."

"All right."

"Phoebe called you."

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