NEVA POV
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Holt left in the afternoon.
Not permanently — we all understood that — but for the immediate moment, which was itself something. He shook Ryke's hand at the gate with the careful formality of two people who hadn't learned yet how to be warmer than formal with each other, but who were, I thought, watching them, willing to learn. He looked at me before he got into the car. Not the assessment look this time. Something more direct, more honest, the look of a man who'd revised his initial calculation and hadn't yet decided what to do with the revision.
"You make good tea," he said.
"I practice," I said.
His mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. Then he was in the car, and the car was gone, and the compound exhaled around me the way it did after every departure that h
