The Distance Between Two Hands

Cal found Ada in the small yard behind the customs house, trying to repair a tear in her cuff with her left hand.

“You're making it larger,” he said.

“That's a temporary stage.”

“Of the repair?”

“Of my temper.”

He sat on the step at a careful distance.

The yard held three rain barrels, a stack of broken crates and a fig tree that had survived in a crack where no one could explain its roots. A cat watched them from the wall. It had been stealing kitchen scraps for days and was beginning to regard the customs house as an institution beneath its supervision.

Ada put the needle down.

“How were the others?”

“Some want to leave. Some want to stay and finish their training. Two don't know where they'd go if they were sent home. One boy asked whether his father had to be told what he said.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I didn't know yet, and that I wouldn't carry his answer to anyone until we had an answer to that.”

Cal rubbed the heel of his hand against his knee.

“I wanted to say yes. Not to telling his father. To safety. I wanted to be able to promise it so badly that I almost did.”

Ada looked at him.

“What stopped you?”

“You. Not the idea that you'd catch me. What you said about making myself feel able to do something.”

The cat dropped from the wall and inspected Cal's boots.

“I've thought about the letter,” he said. “Not only about why I wrote it. About how useful I found the thought that I'd be the one taking the greater risk.”

“You were taking a risk.”

“Yes. It let me stop looking at what I was asking other people to risk.”

Ada turned the cuff inside out. The original stitching had been her mother's, small and patient. She could repair beside it without making her stitches identical.

“I was frightened when I read it,” she said. “Not just angry. I'd begun to stop watching everything you did.”

Cal's face changed.

“I don't want you to have to watch me.”

“I know.”

They sat while the cat attempted to convince them that its interest in their company was not connected to food.

“I can't promise never to be afraid or make a bad choice,” he said at last. “I can tell you when I'm afraid before I put somebody else's name beneath it.”

“That would help.”

“And if you decide you don't want this—”

“Don't make me answer that so you can know whether the apology worked.”

He stopped.

After a moment he nodded. “You're right.”

Ada picked up the needle again. Her left hand managed the thread badly. Cal did not reach for it. Eventually she held it out.

“Can you thread this? That's all.”

He did, leaving the sewing to her.

The distinction was small. It mattered because they both understood it.

She finished three uneven stitches, then broke the thread by pulling too hard. Cal looked away quickly. Ada began to laugh, and his restraint lasted no longer.

“The cuff has made its position clear,” he said.

“It wants a professional.”

“It has been brave.”

She bumped his knee with hers. Neither moved away afterwards.

Inside, Pella called for someone who could lift a flour sack without discussing it. Cal rose, then waited when Ada touched his sleeve.

The kiss was brief and less certain than the one beside the river. Ada chose it without trying to make it stand for every answer she had not reached. His good hand rested against her shoulder, warm through the coat. When they separated, he looked relieved and careful at once.

“This doesn't make the rest disappear,” she said.

“I know.”

“Good. Because that would be a terrible use of a kiss.”

He smiled then, properly.

They went inside and carried the sack together. Pella watched them over the top of her account book, said nothing for an extraordinary length of time, then asked whether the flour might be set down before either of them attempted to negotiate its emotional significance.

Ada nearly dropped her end.

That evening, the physical warehouse count arrived.

The city had fewer days of immediately accessible grain than the assured-arrival figure had implied. It also had enough to survive a carefully staged reduction if the northern stores released their first cargoes now and if the court branches began surrendering capacity before the central lock was attempted.

The plan was narrower than they had hoped. It was not impossible.

Ada set the repaired cuff beside the figures and worked until Mara told everyone in the room to sleep, not because the work had ended but because none of them had become more useful in the last half hour.

Cal left his copy of the grain release request on the table where everyone could read it.