She knows Ana. He wonders, in some abstract way, if she has always known Ana.
He listens, quite intently, though the expression doesn’t change. He thinks the white child must be her daughter. “Beyza,” he says, a matter of recognition and so little else. And were he still weak, crippled beneath the unbearable weight of all the things he’d done, he might have yearned for the simplicity of their first meeting, the precious little warmth he’d felt in his smile. But he is no longer weak and he is not moved to regret, not yet.
He tilts his head at her appraisal, glances down as if he might see through the chest to the stagnant thing beneath. When he looks up again, the mouth has twisted itself into something like a smirk. Something that suggests he knows something secret. It is not malicious, no, because he knows that she is his friend. And even without a beating heart he knows that he was fond of her once. Perhaps he still is.
“Different,” he says without inflection. Here, he might have drawn a breath, held it hard and fast just to feel the lungs spasm. But he merely goes on looking at her, blinks occasionally – more out of habit than any real necessity. “I don’t know if ‘better’ is the right word.” He rolls a shoulder then, turns his focus to the horizon. “Relieved,” he murmurs and then nods. This is the perfect word to describe it.
“You were right,” he continues and then drags his focus back to her face. “She was happy to help. I should have asked a long time ago.”
