he 'd tried all those before and gotten nowhere . my head jerks up and i blink . but when she looked up , and those wide brown eyes caught his , the hope that he had spoken about earlier seemed to flutter through him . it was the one-on-one things he could n't do . dad looked from one to the other as if this were some kind of sporting event where he did n't quite understand the rules . he 's old enough to like it . '' 