"Something like practice," Darlington says. "Learning the bounds of what your empathic abilities are capable of." The Arlington way of manners, might, and know-how held little if any space for what his grandfather might have called psychological claptrap, but practice is something Darlington understands implicitly. "Sounds as though your Dr. Bright came along just when you needed her."

The path narrows a few feet up ahead, and Darlington lets Caleb pull forward, following single-file in his wake until it's wide enough to run at his side again. He uses the time to think, to consider his next question. "Would you have chosen it?" he asks, and it's blunt and direct, but honestly meant. "If you'd had a choice in it at all."