“You should have taken her back to the kitchen.” His eyes had narrowed — not cruelly, but with the wariness of a man who had just learned, in the space of ten minutes, that people are not what they present themselves to be.
Adrienne felt the old instinct to lower her head, to apologize, to make herself small and safe.
And then she found she had run out of the willingness to do it.
She lifted her chin and met his eyes.
“I know,” she said.
“But sometimes children understand that someone needs help long before the adults do.
My daughter heard a person crying behind a door, and she didn’t stop to ask whose door it was, or whether it was her business, or whether it might cost her mother a job.
She just knew someone needed help, and she went.
I’ve spent a year in this building teaching myself not to notice things.
Tonight she reminded me what it costs to look away.”
Corbin held her gaze for a long moment, and something in his face — the wariness — eased, just slightly, into something closer to respect.
“How long have you worked in this building?” he asked.
“A year, sir.”
“A year.” He said it slowly, as though the number embarrassed him.