There was a time when he could have stood to be less clean.

Fancy that.

"It will not be the last," he notes, with the kind of detachment that implies he isn't actually talking about himself, necessarily, as that depends on how the next hour or so goes. Kind people, in his experience, get used, not only because they welcome it. He sinks into the slouch that has become almost customary for him, watching the tangle of hands he has upon cane, and wondering what all he's going to have to tell her for this thing to be done and complete.