"It used to," he said. "Now I think it's just accurate. I'm good at the perimeter. Some people are good at the center. Both are necessary." He turned the canvas back to face the wall. "You're good at the center. You might not have known that when you arrived, but you are."
I looked at him.
"Silo," I said. "Thank you. For every night you stood at the gate when nobody asked you to. For the scouts you handled. For the way you said my name the first time." I paused. "For all of it."
He looked at the floor for a moment.
"You're welcome," he said. Quiet. The two words he'd said to me once before, in a hallway, the first time I'd thanked him for something he was pretending he hadn't done.
We walked back to the main building without saying anything else, because some things didn't need to be
