I wanted to thank them.

I —” He stopped, and understood something from my own face, and his eyes filled.

“They didn’t make it back in.

Did they.

That’s why you’re here.”

“No,” I said.

“They didn’t.”

He took us out to his small workshop behind the house, moving slowly, and from a nail on the wall he lifted down a single object and held it out to me on his open palm.