Owen was sitting on the floor with the striped polo rumpled and the toy car idle in his palm. He had been listening. Thin doors. Marcus sat on the rug, which his knees disliked, and did not pretend the sitting was casual.
"You didn't do a bad thing," he said.
Owen's eyes were glossy and rebellious about it. "I took the money."
"You took it because a grown-up handed it to you in a room where saying no is hard. Then you put it back. Both of those can be true. You're not in trouble. Grandpa isn't your job to fix, and Lena's paper wasn't your fault."
"He ripped it."
"He did."
"Why?"
Marcus had a dozen answers, most of them too large for the room: his own childhood, Audrey's letter, the way some men experience a girl's excellence as an accusation. He picked the one he could say without lying and without recruiting Owen into a war.
"Because he wanted to feel big, and her good grade made him feel something else, and he chose mean. That was a bad choice. It was his. Not yours. Not hers."
Owen turned the car over. The wheels spun and stopped. "Is he coming next Sunday?"
"No."
"Is he mad at me for the money?"
"If he is, that's another bad choice. You can be sad about it. You don't have to undo it."
Owen thought. His thinking looked like staring at a scuff on the baseboard. "Can I still love him if I don't want him to come?"
The question sat Marcus back on his heels. He rubbed his palm over his scalp, a habit from when there had been hair to rearrange.