That night, long after Benjamin had said his warm goodbyes and driven away in his loud car, Mr. Caleb sat alone in his study. He had not turned on the main light, only the small lamp on the corner of his desk, which threw a warm circle onto the papers in front of him.
He was not reading the papers.
He was sitting back in his chair with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes on something that was not in the room.
She looks like her. Victoria. Around the eyes, especially.
He had not thought about Victoria in he could not even say how long. Years. Many years. He had been very deliberate about not thinking about her. He was a disciplined man. When he decided not to think about something, he did not think about it.
But Benjamin’s words had slipped past all that discipline the way smoke slips under a closed door. There was nothing to grab onto and push back. They were just words, casually said by an old friend who had probably already forgotten he said them.
And yet here he was, sitting in the dark with the lamp on, not reading.