Art had grabbed his shoulder, and Ben was reminded of the way Elliott's mother had kept reaching out to touch him at critical moments during their interaction earlier that week. This was like that, sort of, like a grounding or calming touch, except Ben wasn't panicking now the way he had been on Tuesday night. Well, he was panicking, but it wasn't the same — a constant steady hum of background noise instead of the crescendo of an orchestra. Ben reached up and touched Art's wrist just briefly, as though acknowledging that he existed and was here, then ran his hand through his hair.

"I do," he replied, shaking his head. (I, not we, though he wasn't really thinking about the language shift). "I promised my sister. I told her I'd take care of it. If it was just — if it was just a thing he'd said then —" Ben left the sentence unfinished. If it had just been a throwaway comment meant to provoke him, he would have called it off already. He probably still would have challenged him, because he didn't want Macmillan thinking he could say that sort of thing about a respectable married woman without consequences — certainly not about Ben's sister without consequence — but they wouldn't have had to go through with it. Once he'd had his conversation with Nova yesterday, though, and he'd seen how panicked she was at just the mention of Elmer Macmillan's name, he'd known he couldn't back out.

"She's terrified," he admitted, looking up at Art for the first time since he'd closed the distance between them. "I don't know what happened with them, but — but it's not just a thing he said, there's something to it, and I can't — I can't let him ruin my sister."