He Had Never Asked for Advice
“He had never asked anyone for advice. It turned out to be easier than he'd thought.” The single lamp in the kitchen, tea poured a third of the way, and a number he chose himself. Ashley talks about a feeling — “Like before that house.” “I know,” Simon answers. He asked Jacob in the car; Jacob said “no” and didn’t give a name, “and this wasn’t ‘I don’t know.’” To admit it “meant giving that back” — what he had pieced together for himself at the locker. “He wasn’t giving it back. He set it down next to what Ash had said and looked at them both.” “I believe you, Ash.” — “What should I do?” “He had never asked anyone for advice. It turned out to be easier than he’d thought.”
It is a quiet but enormous step: for the first time Simon does not choose between his own version and someone else’s but sets them side by side; for the first time he brings Ashley the missing fact instead of “it’s fine”; for the first time he asks for advice. For three years she “hadn’t believed a word of it — and kept showing up anyway”; now there is no armor between them, and she has nothing to answer with except the truth. The card “Believing and Remembering in the Same Second” described this ability in relation to Jacob; here, for the first time, it works for his safety. Ashley’s answer breaks off at “tonight, don’t stay alo—”: there is a knock at the door, “the way people you know knock,” and something warm flickers — “He might have left early.” Two knocks, quiet, short. He goes to open the door with the phone in his hand.
