Eli blinked.
“That ain’t connected.”
“It is if I say it is.”
His mother straightened.
“Mr. Boone, that’s generous, but it doesn’t pay my light bill.”
Walter looked at her.
“No. But maybe a boy who finishes what he’s built to do can pay more than this month’s fear.”
She held his gaze.
Walter knew exactly how that sounded.
Too grand.
Too easy from someone leaving in an old truck he still owned.
So he added, quieter, “I ain’t making promises for life. I’m saying don’t let the urgent steal the useful before it’s grown teeth.”
Nobody spoke.
The little sister on the floor looked up and asked, “Are lambs loud?”
Walter turned to her.
“Yes.”
She considered that.
“Good,” she said. “This place needs louder.”
Eli laughed then.
A broken, startled laugh.
The kind that only comes when despair loses its grip for one second.
On the drive home Walter knew two things.
One: he had just reopened a gate in himself he had spent months trying to nail shut.
Two: Daniel was going to lose his mind.
He did.
That night.
Over the phone.
“You what?”
Walter held the receiver away from his ear a little.
“I said yes to three lambs for the students.”
“You fell down in a shed last week!”
“I slipped.”
“You sold your flock because it was too much!”
“Three lambs is not a flock.”
Daniel sounded like he was pacing on the other end.
“Dad, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You are choosing sentiment over sense.”
Walter’s own temper rose.
“No. I’m choosing work over surrender.”
Claire got on the line later, after Daniel exhausted himself.
She did not yell.
That somehow hurt more.
“Are you doing this because you want it,” she asked, “or because you’re afraid what happens if you stop being needed?”
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