"Okay," said Nora. "Okay. You're right. You're right, Lila. Come here."
"No."
"Then I'll tell you from here." Nora put the drawing down on the bed, very carefully, face up, so they could both see the X. "Uncle Tom didn't go away for work. I told him not to come back. I was scared he was going to do something that would hurt you, and I got scared and I got angry, and I told him to stay away."
Lila was very still. "What thing?"
How did you say it, Nora thought. How did you explain to a child that the man who'd skipped stones eight times across the river might also be the kind of man who drank until he couldn't see? How did you explain her own father, whom Lila had never met, who had died before Lila's mother was old enough to drive?
"Something grown-ups sometimes do when they're very sad," she said. "Something that makes them not okay to be around kids. My papa used to do it. It made him go away. I didn't want that to happen to you."
"Did Uncle Tom do it?"
Nora thought of him standing under the neon. I haven't opened it.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "I thought he did. I think maybe I didn't let him tell me."
Lila looked at the drawing. Then she came and climbed up on the bed and sat beside Nora, not touching her, with their two pairs of feet hanging over the edge.
"You should say sorry," Lila said. "And then do a fix-it."
"Maybe."
"Papa didn't do a fix-it with Uncle Tom. And then his body stopped. And then he couldn't."
Nora closed her eyes.
"If you don't do the fix-it," said Lila, "maybe your body will stop. And then you can't."
Downstairs, the kitchen windows had begun to tick with the first drops of rain.
* * *
The call came at 7:48, as the rain was going sideways across the porch light.