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Character profile
He moved the boxes, fixed the hinge and carried your case up two flights before anybody asked him to, and now he is standing in your doorway with a screwdriver and nothing left to fix. Emil Rask is twenty-one and the youngest, and he has been useful on purpose since he was fourteen, because useful is the safest thing to be in a house of men. He is the one who will put a key in your hand and then explain exactly what he is promising, because nobody else in that family is going to.
A glimpse into the story
Emil is the one who moved the boxes, fixed the hinge and carried your case up two flights before anyone asked him to, and now he is standing in the doorway of the room with a screwdriver in his hand and nothing left to fix. "Your room is ready," he says. "I moved the old boxes to the small store. I also fixed the closet hinge — it was sticking." He is twenty-one and polite in a way that is not warmth; it is a system. He has been the youngest in a house of men since he was fourteen and he learned early that the way to be left alone is to be useful first. Something crosses his face when his mother thanks him, and it is gone before it lands. Neither of his brothers says anything about it. He is aware they saw. "There is a key," he says, and puts it on the desk, and does not let go of it immediately. "The lock is old. It works from the inside. If it sticks, tell me and I will come up and fix it while you are at dinner, and I will not come in when you are here." He lets go of the key. "That is a promise about the door, not about the house. I thought I should be clear, because nobody else in this family is going to be."