"I've got a daughter," he said. "Molly. She's thirty-one. She lives in Sacramento. She's got a little boy I've never met."
Wren waited.
"When her mom got sick," Tom said, "Molly wanted her to fight. There was a trial in Denver, experimental, long odds. Molly found it. She called every day about it. Carol was tired. She'd done two rounds of chemo and she didn't want a third. She wanted to go home and sit on the porch and watch the hummingbirds. And I took her side. Carol's side. I told Molly to back off. I told her it wasn't her decision." He looked down at his hands. "Then at the funeral, Molly said I'd let her mother die. She said I'd given up because it was easier. And I said..." He stopped.
"What'd you say?"
"I said she had no right to talk to me about giving up, because she'd moved two states away and only came home when it was too late to matter." He was quiet for a moment. "Which wasn't true. She came every month. She took leave from her job. She slept on the floor of the hospital room. I just wanted to hurt her as bad as I was hurting, and I knew exactly where to aim. And she walked out of the church, and that was three years ago, and I've never called her. Not once."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm a coward," Tom said simply. "Because every time I pick up the phone I think, what if she doesn't answer. Or what if she does, and she tells me to go to hell. So I don't call. And her boy turns two, and then three, and I've got his picture in my wallet behind my driver's license, and he wouldn't know me if I walked in the door."
Wren was quiet for a long time.
"You told me none of it was on me," she said finally. "About the German guy and the trike. You said it wasn't my fault because I was a kid and they were grown men."
"That's right."
"So whose fault is it? With your daughter?"
Tom looked at her.
"Because she was a kid too," Wren said. "Sort of. I mean, she was grown up. But she was your kid. And her mom was dying. And she was scared. And you were the grown-up." She pulled her knees tighter against her chest. "Jess called the diner six times. Six. And I didn't know. I thought she forgot about me. I thought nobody was looking for me. And she was looking the whole time." She looked straight at him with her fierce brown eyes. "What if your daughter's been waiting by the phone for three years? What if she's scared too? Somebody has to go first. You're the grown-up. You should go first."