Carter was pretty cute. When Callie told him to say thank you, he totally butchered the pronunciation of Adam's last name to the point that it almost made him laugh before he caught himself.
That really threw him off because he hadn't laughed at anything since before the accident. It had been nearly six months.
That strange feeling stuck with him through the inspection where Aaliyah acted just as afraid of him as she had the day before. Oddly, he didn't care as much as he had yesterday.
Perhaps it was because that little boy had looked at him with something akin to hero worship because of a few toys and managed to make him laugh. He had felt a spark of something in a sea of despair and nothingness earlier and wasn't sure what to do about it.
