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But suddenly, the room felt too small, and she looked out the back window. “You have a firepit out there, don’t you?”

She had noticed it when it was still light outside.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Can I see?”

“Sure,” he said.

If he thought it was strange, he didn’t say.

She was...searching for the right words. Because she knew that he was going to be angry that she had deviated from her exact task. Because it was what had exposed the dyslexia. He knew that he had it. He must.

But what if he didn’t?

She swallowed hard when they got outside. “This is pretty,” she said, looking around the area, all done with pavers and with seating everywhere. “I bet when everybody’s home it’s really fun.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She wondered if anybody really understood. She hadn’t, until today, somehow.

The weight that he carried. The way that he clearly wanted to be left alone to do his own thing, but how he was so enmeshed in the lives of all these other people, and solitary and not quite whole without them.

It must be awful.

She imagined it was what being a parent was like. Well, if you were a functional parent, and not like hers.

And she wanted to help him. Even though she knew she’d make him mad. She wanted to...to do something. To take care of him, maybe. It was the strangest, biggest burning shock of emotion she’d ever experienced. It was a callback to old Quinn.

To the one who had wanted to do well so badly, she’d insisted on herself. Followed her dad around day in, day out, chattering, badgering him.

Quinn, not today. The constant chattering is too damned annoying.

And the next day he’d left.

She knew there was a cost to this, and she still couldn’t help herself.

But you don’t love Levi. You just want to help. So you can handle it.

“I just... I needed to say something,” she said.

He looked at her, his expression sharp.

“What?”

“I went through some of your files, and I know that wasn’t really on the table. But I noticed some things.”

“Quinn, I didn’t tell you to look through it. It’s because I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I want to help you.”

And maybe she was blowing up the whole thing. The whole easement and everything. But it wasn’t just about that, not now.

“I wanted to talk to you about the... You’re dyslexic, right?”

“Quinn, I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“There are systems. For people with dyslexia. And there are ways that...”