"You said to ask you again when I got out," she said.
"I did."
"I'm asking."
He set his wrench down on the shop towel. He stood up, slowly, his hand on the bike's seat. He had thought a great deal, in the last month, about what he was going to say when this happened, and he had come up with several good versions, and he found now that he wasn't going to use any of them.
"Go ahead," he said.
She said it. She said it plainly and all the way through, without excuses and without crying, standing in the cold with her son beside her. She said what she had done and when and why, and that it had been wrong, and that it had cost him things she could never pay back and would never pretend to, and that she was sorry. She did not ask him to forgive her. He noticed that. He thought it was probably the most important thing about it.
When she was done the alley was very quiet. A dryer vent on the side of the laundromat breathed out a warm cloud of steam that smelled of dryer sheets.
"Okay," Lazaro said. "I heard you."
"That's it?"
"That's it for today. I don't think it's a one-day thing. I think I'm going to be glad you said it for a while and then mad at you for a while and then glad again. I think that's probably how it goes. But I heard you. And I'm glad your boy came and got me. I want you to know that part isn't complicated at all."