Is it betrayal to want a break from the child you love?
The Boy Who Lined Up the Pencils
Nico was seven, and he loved La Pagina che Fa le Fusa for one reason only: the cup of pencils on the counter. Every Saturday at ten past nine, he came in holding his father’s hand, walked straight to the counter, took all the pencils out of the cup and lined them up along the edge of the wood, from shortest to longest, with great precision. Then he put them back. Then he did it again.
Moira Hopes had learned, the first time, not to touch the pencils. She had also learned that Nico did not like to be spoken to straight away, that he liked the ginger cat very much and the grey cat a little less, and that his favourite book in the shop was a large atlas of the world’s railways, which he did not read but turned, page by page, from the beginning to the end.
His father, Paolo, was a tall, quiet man of about forty who worked as an electrician and who always stood a little behind his son, watchful, his hands half raised, as though Nico were a glass that might tip.
On the third Saturday of March, Nico lined up the pencils, put them back, lined them up again, and went to sit on the floor with the railway atlas and Ashwaganda. And Paolo did not stand behind him. He sat down, quite suddenly, on the small wooden stool by the poetry shelf, and put his face in his hands.
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