Peder had been coming to Tael for eight months. He had one question remaining.
He had been careful with it for four years. Before he came to Tael, he had been careful alone, which meant developing a set of habits that kept him away from situations where he might feel the pressure to ask. He had retired as a geologist at fifty-six, five years before the standard retirement age, because fieldwork increasingly required questions: of colleagues, of the land, of instruments when they gave ambiguous readings. He had moved to a smaller town. He saw fewer people. He had explained all of this to Tael without apparent regret.
Her work with him, for eight months, had been to identify what the question was for. He had told her, in the third session, that he was saving it. She had asked for what. He had been silent for a long time and then said: I don't know yet.
People who came to her with single remaining questions often gave this answer. They had preserved the question without knowing its purpose, because the alternative was spending it on something unworthy, and over years of preservation the question had acquired a weight that made every possible use feel unworthy. Tael had eight years of notes on this pattern. She had not found a way to interrupt it that did not require another question.
Today was their twenty-seventh session. Peder said: I had something I was going to ask my daughter.
What stopped you, Tael said. She had learned to rephrase as declaratives.
The situation passed, he said. She solved it herself.
How did that feel, she said.
He looked at the window. He said: like something I'd been carrying got heavier.
She wrote in his notes. She had a tentative theory about Peder: that the thing he was saving it for was not a situation but a person, and that the situation kept not arising because he kept maintaining distance from the person. She had not shared this theory. She was not sure it was hers to share.
Peder said: I'm not going to ask today.
She said: I know.
He left. She did not know if he would ever ask. In eight years as a question counselor, she had had four clients spend their final questions. All four had been surprised by what they asked.