She'd been over since dinner. Past eleven now. As I stood in the hallway watching her put her coat on I was still turning over something she'd said around nine — a small precise reframing of the problem I'd been working through, the kind of thing she does effortlessly and that I couldn't have arrived at in a week alone. She zipped her coat methodically, the same way she does everything. It struck me how much I'd learned from just watching her move through problems. She said goodnight. I said goodnight back and held the door open, and there was a particular respect in how I did it — the way you open a door for someone whose mind has shaped your own.
