"Tie it like this." Malcolm holds his own hands around his sister's, gently forming knots with her fingers, so she can see what it feels like and do it herself. Gil watches intently, not interfering, while Jackie lays out picnic supplies on the blanket behind him.
It was at Malcolm's request that they invited Ainsley, whom they hardly know. As much as Gil knows the ins and outs of who Malcolm is, he realizes again how little he knows about huge parts of the kid's life. He's barely ever seen the siblings interacting.
"Why isn't it working?" Ainsley, at twelve, is quick, bright, and volatile—far more than her brother was. Malcolm calls her the normal one, but Gil isn't so sure. There's something brittle about her, an unusual feeling that she's both older and younger than she's supposed to be, somehow.
"Give it more line," Malcolm coaxes patiently. "Don't control it so tightly."
Gil isn't sure what he expected, but it wasn't this. He has no children of his own, but surely it can't be normal for siblings to get along this well. He and Jackie had resigned themselves to dealing with whatever fights or arguments they would have to referee. But there's none of that.
"I can't. You do it," Ainsley finally huffs in frustration and holds the downed kite back out to her brother. Malcolm stands behind her and puts his arms around her slight frame, once again holding her hands, then helping her let the kite go slowly, as it catches the breeze and finally soars into the sky.
"Be patient," he hears Malcolm say. "If you let it go easy and don't jerk on it, it will fly."
Two hours later, after sandwiches and lemonade, Jackie leaves with Ainsley for a girls afternoon at the spa, and Gil takes Malcolm to the museum of Medieval weaponry—the kid's favorite.
As they walk through row upon row of axes and swords that, truth be told, look the same to Gil, he clears his throat. "I was proud of you today."
"What for?" Malcolm asks, peering at every angle of a Saxon spearhead.
"The way you treat your sister. It's—you're really good with her, Malcolm. That must make it easier on your mom, too."
Malcolm doesn't turn around, but Gil can see that he's blushing because his ears turn pink. The kid shrugs. "We have to stick together. We're all we've got. I knew it since the night you arrested my dad. Ains was so little and confused. I—I couldn't ever fight with her after that. Not really."
"She's lucky to have you," Gil affirms, waiting while Malcolm interacts with a hands-on chainmail exhibit.
"I'm lucky to have her," Malcolm returns, rejoining him. "A couple of years ago, she saw me have one of my night terrors, one of the really bad, violent ones. I never wanted her to see that, but when I woke up, she wasn't freaked out. She just hugged me, and she made hot cocoa for me like she was a tiny version of mom. My mom never even woke that up that time because Ainsley took care of me."
"Fair enough," Gil answers, "you're lucky to have each other."
"The best thing is, she's never seen Martin," Malcolm adds quickly. "She knows who he is because there's no way to avoid it, but she barely remembers him."
Gil wonders to himself if this will be enough, if it would be enough for any child in the long run, but he doesn't say it because he knows it would set Malcolm off. "A lot of kids wish they had a big brother to protect them. I can see why the two of you are close."
Malcolm laughs, and it's a sound Gil loves and doesn't hear frequently enough. "Protect her? She's more likely to protect me. The only time she's ever been in real trouble at school is when a kid said something bad about our family, and she punched him in the face so hard he had to get dental work."
Gil smiles. "Hard to tell what's going on in that head of hers."
"Impossible to profile," Malcolm echoes, his tone conveying pride. "I've tried for years. I'll keep trying. But I can't figure her out."
"Sometimes the people closest to us are the hardest," Gil says, but he doesn't really believe that's the answer. He agrees with the kid that his sister is impossible to quantify, like a puzzle he can't make head or tails of. He sometimes finds women tougher to read, but he gets there. And he's met plenty of children related to criminals over the years. He understands Malcolm pretty well, after all, not exactly a simple proposition. Maybe more time with Ainsley would do it, but he sort of doubts it.
"Good thing you can love someone without fully understanding them," Gil finally adds, following Malcolm into the helmet room.
"Uh huh," Malcolm agrees, heading into the visored section. "Happy to let her be the normal one."
"Normal," Gil thinks, is not the word he would have used.
