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“Do you have a bank account?”

Locke looks up. “Yes.”

“How?”

“It took a while. Rachel helped with the paperwork. There wasn’t a box for what I am.”

“There won’t be one for me either.”

“No.” Locke sets down the box. “But they’ve done it once now.”

Locke picks up the box again and checks one corner with his thumb.

“What’s that?”

“For Rachel.”

“What does it do?”

“Holds things.”

“What things?”

He shrugs. “Whatever she wants.”

The box is simple compared with some of the furniture in the workshop, but the corners fit so closely I can barely find the seams. Fine dust clings to Locke’s fingers where they move over one edge, and I keep watching the careful way he checks a place that already looks finished to me.

“Did she ask for it?”

“No.”

“Then why are you making it?”

Locke starts sanding again. “Because I want to give it to her.”

I understand someone giving another person something. Laura bought me clothes. Shannon and Janet brought things when I had none. But Locke is spending hours making something Rachel didn’t ask for, smoothing edges she may never notice because he wants her to have it.

“Why?”

Locke stops sanding.

“Because I love her.”

My fingers stop against the edge of the workbench. For a moment, I hear nothing except the faint scrape of wood settling against the table and the sounds from outside drifting through the open window.

Love isn’t a new word. I’ve heard it in music, on television, and in conversations I didn’t fully understand before I had a body. People use it for other people, food, clothes, places, songs, almost anything.

“What does that mean?”

Locke watches me for a moment before putting the sandpaper down.

“You don’t know?”

“I know how people use the word. I don’t know what it is.” He leans back against the workbench, and I wait because Locke rarely answers important questions quickly.

“I used to think it meant wanting Rachel safe,” he says.

“That’s what she wished for.”