"Damn right. I had a good teacher."
He took a step and then another.
"That's enough," he said. "I'm too heavy for you."
"Come on. You need to look outside, see the water, the sky. You need to be upright."
He made it into the living room. Out to the porch. Tottering and feeble but moving ahead. His legs prickled and burned as if they were waking from a twenty-year slumber, his bare feet numb against the floor.
Together they stood on the porch in the steady drizzle. When he turned to her, Monica's forest green T-shirt was pasted to her body, her hair shining. Down in the butterfly garden she'd planted a small stone angel and there were flowers blooming around it, lantana, yellow and red.
Blackwater Sound glistened like a silver tray picked clean of its treats. A single gull washed itself against the raw sky.
"You did it. You made it outside."
"We both did it," Thorn said.
"Mainly you."
Thunder rumbled out of the west. Dolphins rose and fell beyond the horizon—their pain silent and unknowable.
"Have I thanked you lately for everything you've done? Have I told you how much I love you?"
Monica didn't reply. She stepped out from under the weight of his arm and smiled at him as he gripped the rail, balancing again on the unsteady surface of the earth.
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 32
