Danny walked into Lieder’s house.
Lieder stayed outside for a while. No doubt trying to figure out what it was, exactly, that Danny had done. What had it felt like to him? Agony, yes-but had he understood that for a moment, his fingerbones had become tiny shards inside limp sacks of skin? Had he felt Danny move by an inch, instantaneously, or had he registered it only as Danny pulling away with incredible strength?
Danny walked into the house and quickly found the kitchen, where apparently the cocoa was already made, for Nicki was pouring it into three cups. She moved slowly. She held the pitcher with two hands. It trembled in her grip-if it could be called a grip. Danny half-expected it to slip out of her fingers at any moment. No wonder Lieder didn’t want his wife trying to show him hospitality.
It was not deliberate, not planned. More of a reflex, as if Danny had seen the pitcher slipping from her grasp and lunged out to catch it. Only the pitcher was not slipping, and he didn’t lunge with his hands. Instead, he sent out a gate, passed it over her, around her, and brought her out of it without having moved her more than a hairsbreadth from where she stood.
She seemed to register it as a shudder. “Oh, someone stepped on my grave,” she said, with a tiny laugh, and then flinched as if she expected to cough, only she didn’t cough.
Because passing a gate over her had healed her. It always did. Whatever was wrong with a person, passing through a gate always healed it, as long as their body parts were still attached and they weren’t fully dead.
Not that she immediately became strong and hale-she looked completely unchanged. Except that her hand didn’t tremble holding the pitcher, and there was color in her cheeks and she didn’t seem so fragile as she continued pouring. “Isn’t that odd,” she said. “I felt a chill, and yet now I’m suddenly warm. I’m never warm anymore, but I am right now.”
“Furnaces are like that,” said Danny. “One minute you’re cold, the next you’re hot. But remember, you’re holding a pot of hot cocoa.”
“Of course,” she said. “No wonder I’m warm! I should feel downright hot.”
“It’s nice of you to give this to me,” said Danny. “I don’t usually eat breakfast, but it’s cold enough today that even a good run didn’t warm me up the way it usually does.”
She laughed as she set down the pitcher. The cups were full. Then covered her mouth. “I don’t know why I laughed,” she said. “Nothing you said was funny.”
“But I said it in a funny way,” said Danny.
“You say everything in a funny way,” she said.
“I lived in Ohio for a while, but I didn’t think I picked up an accent.”
“No, not an accent,” she said. “You talk as if you got the joke, but didn’t really expect me to get it. Only just now I think I did get it. Isn’t that funny?”
Danny smiled. And as he looked at her, he realized that the hand to the mouth, the way she was looking at the cups instead of at him-this woman was shy.
Not really shy. Just sort of generally embarrassed. He saw this all the time, but not with adults. No, he saw it at high school. He saw it with girls when some guy talked to them. A guy she kind of liked, or maybe liked a lot, and she couldn’t believe he was paying attention to her.
This isn’t Coach Lieder’s wife, thought Danny. This is his daughter.
She called him daddy, not by the habit of a husband and wife, but because he really was her father.
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” asked Danny.
“How old do you think?” she asked. But her face showed that she hated the question.
“I’m deciding between sixteen and eighteen,” said Danny.
“What’s wrong with seventeen?” she asked. But there was relief in her voice. Nobody had guessed so young an age in a long time. How could they?
“Seventeen is a nothing age,” said Danny. “Sixteen is driving and eighteen is voting.”
“You can get into R-rated movies by yourself at seventeen,” said Nicki. “Not that I go anywhere.”
“Not that there’s a theater worth going to,” said Danny.
“Not in BV,” said Nicki. “But there’s a theater in Lexington. I just … don’t go out much. I don’t even watch movies on TV anymore. I lose interest, somehow. I fall asleep. No point in renting a movie just to sleep through it.”
“You’ve been sick.”
“Oh, I’m dying,” she said. “There are ups and downs. Right now I think today might be a good day. A very good day. But probably that’s just because of the company.”
“This is very good cocoa,” said Danny.
“Daddy buys me only the best. There’s not much he can do for me, but he can get me first-rate cocoa. He’s so gruff with other people, but he’s really very kind to me. I like to think that only I get to see who he really is.” She looked at him over the cocoa cup as she took a sip. “I know he was angry with you. That’s why I came to the door.”
“Thanks for saving me,” said Danny. “I think your father has a low opinion of my team spirit.”
“He cares so much about his teams,” said Nicki. “He wants everyone to do their best, but Parry McCluer High School isn’t noted for the ambition of its students.” Then she touched her mouth again. “I can’t believe I said that. I haven’t … I haven’t been sarcastic in years.”
“Then you’re probably overdue,” said Danny. “I think everybody needs to say something sarcastic at least once a week. Of course, I’m years ahead.”
“And I’m years behind,” said Nicki. “But it’s getting late. I don’t want you to be called in to the vice-principal’s office on account of me and my cocoa.”
“I’m far more afraid of Coach Lieder than of any vice-principal. Besides, when I get in trouble I end up talking to Principal Massey.”
“Only the best for you,” she said.
“Or else it’s only the worst for him,” said Danny.
She laughed. So did he; but he also got up and carried both their cups to the sink. Coach Lieder’s cup remained untouched on the table.
“I’m sorry you only know my father in his grumpy moods.”
“I’m glad to know that he has any other. I’m assuming you’ve seen nongrumpy moods yourself, and aren’t just repeating a rumor.”
“That would be gossip,” said Nicki. A moment’s hesitation. “Will I see you again?”
“I doubt it,” Danny answered truthfully. “I think your father is very unhappy that I accepted your invitation this time.”
“But if I invited you again?”
“Does your father own a gun?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know how to use it. I think he bought it to make a political statement.”
Or because he was afraid of some student coming to assassinate him some dark night, thought Danny. “Thanks for the cocoa. I’m very warm now.”
“Me too,” she said.
He made it to the door unescorted, but Coach Lieder was waiting outside by his car. Danny expected to be yelled at, but instead Lieder only said, “Get in. I’ll drive you to school.”
Danny tried to assess what Lieder was planning-was he only speaking softly because he was afraid Nicki could hear him? But then he thought: If I don’t like what he says, I can always gate away.
Then he rebuked himself. I’ve already made three gates today, and it hasn’t been a full day since I vowed never to make another here in BV.
Except the one that would take him to Marion and Leslie in Yellow Springs, and the one that Veevee used to get back and forth between his house and Naples, Florida. He’d reconstructed those last night, when he got his gates back from the Gate Thief.
Inside the car, Coach Lieder was strangely silent. But when he spoke, he sounded as menacing as ever. “What do you plan to do with my daughter?”
Danny wanted to say, You mean besides healing her of whatever was killing her? Instead, he answered, “I don’t plan to do anything. She invited me in for cocoa. I drank cocoa. We talked. That was it.”
“She likes you,” said Lieder.
“I liked her,” said Danny. “But no, in case you’re worried, I don’t like her that way, she’s just nice and we had a nice conversation and that’s it. Nice. So you don’t have anything to worry about.”