Closing the door behind him, Stan casually walked to the elevator and got inside...
The elevator was empty. He watched the numbers count downward and, in the small quiet that always seemed to gather inside a descending elevator, permitted his thoughts to move for a moment across the shape of the day.
Sacha, in the past two days, drifting into small unfocused inward looks he had told himself were tiredness.
Sophie, three thousand miles away, sitting up in the dark at three in the morning because her body had known his was on fire.
Amelia, boarding a flight within twenty-four hours of learning he was back, arriving in Inksea, and, with the small careful hurry of a woman who had been afraid the answer might be no, asking to see him.
Three different people. Three different developments. His life, quietly, complicating itself along multiple lines at once.
He found, to his mild surprise, that he did not dislike it.
There was something warm about being wanted.
