Dennis arrived last Tuesday.
He had something in his hands, which is not unusual. He was grinning the full grin, which meant he'd found something good.
"LISTEN," he said, before he was fully through the door.
He held out a shell. Large. Pale. Slightly battered on one side, which I suspected was nothing to do with the sea.
"I found it in a skip."
"Of course you did."
"I cleaned it. Proper. Look — "
He held it up. It was, I had to admit, very clean.
Someone had cared about that shell.
Dennis had cared enough to clean it.
Cleanliness doesn't bother Dennis like it bothers me.
Something hard started to grow in my throat.
"Listen," he said again, and put it to my ear before I'd quite agreed to this.
I heard the water.
The distant, constant, gentle sound of it.
Like the harbour. Like sitting on the rocks in the morning when the world hasn't started yet.
"It's your harbour," Dennis said. "But portable. So you've got it when you're not there.
The harbour is still there, I didn't take it I promise."
I looked at him. Then at the shell.
The lump in my throat grew a little larger.
He'd found a shell in a skip and cleaned it properly and brought it over because it sounded like somewhere I love. My safe place.
I don't know how long he'd been carrying it around waiting to show me.
Dennis was still grinning.
And I thought about what Emmet had said. About the noise going quiet. About the small right thing.
I thought about the voice that says stop being mard.
I thought about how Dennis hears different voices that say much worse things than that to him. Mean things.
And I know it hurts him more than he talks about, and the blueprints keep coming anyway.
I reached behind the left cushion.
I put Barbie on the table between us.
Dennis looked at her.
He looked at me.
"This is Barbie," I said, a little hoarse, past the growing lump in my throat. This took all my brave. "She keeps secrets. I brush her hair when things are too loud."
He looked at her for a moment.
"Does it.. she... work? Brushing her hair?"
"...yeah."
"Right then."
He put the shell on the table next to her. Gently.
"Now she's got the harbour too," he said. Softly, like the lapping of the water.
And that was it.
That was the whole thing.
No questions. No but why. No dolls are for girls. Just Dennis, who has never once in his life made the cost higher than it already is, putting the harbour on the table next to the secret-keeper and moving on. Without thinking I'm less.
He'd cleaned it. Properly. And brought it over. To me.
He doesn't entirely understand what the harbour does for me. What it actually is. Why it helps. I'm not even sure I understand it. He tried to make a blueprint of it once. Came and sat on the rocks and looked at everything very carefully for a long time. His notebooks were full of sketches and scribbles trying to learn, not once trying to pull it to bits.
He still hasn't found the how or the why.
But he's working on it.
He said he wants to know how it works so he can maybe — someday — help me feel safe always.
Not just here.
Not just on these rocks.
Everywhere. All the time.
It took a very lot to not cry about that til he had gone home.
I still hide her sometimes. Being brave about her comes and goes. Like the tide.
I'm working on that.
But the shell is on the table.
So we always have the harbour within reach.
And that feels like the right place to start.
The shell is still on the table.
Not because it isn't important enough for a shelf.
Because it's too important not to be within reach.
And Barbie has got the harbour. She's safe with the shell.
And that definitely feels like the right place to start.