'Of course I did,' she said, with concern in her eyes. Another time Liberty might have made a joke of it, teased Alexander about drunken antics she'd heard about previously. Today, though, her attitude was softer. She was in a more fragile state of mind than she cared to admit, but that meant that she could recognise the same in him. He had to know how much she cared about him. Not the nature of her regard – that, Liberty was still doing her best to conceal – but the fact of it? She found, suddenly, that she didn't want that called into question.
She didn't speak immediately when he mentioned little Philip's possessions, because her mind started racing in an effort to make sense of it. It was logical, on the surface. Philip vanishing didn't mean that the objects he'd owned should. It wasn't as if he'd packed up and left home on purpose. But there were other complications, primarily that older Philip's things should have been there too. It was an empirical prediction, if nothing else. Trying to make sense of that was like staring at an incomprehensible terror she had no words to describe, and so she had stopped trying. No wonder this was all so difficult for Alexander.
She took too long in her thoughts, and lost the moment, and then he was turning away. No, she couldn't leave it that way, send him away for coffee, of all things. Liberty got to her feet, none-too-gracefully, and went to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.
'I don't know what it means,' she said. 'I won't pretend to. But I know it's not right. And that it's natural to miss your little boy, Alexander. It doesn't mean you don't care about the man he's going to become. I miss him too, and you're his father, and I can't imagine what you're going through except that it must be...so very complicated.'