At home, Mom tried. She tried in the car on the way to the store; she tried while she was folding laundry on the couch; she tried once from the doorway of his room at night, which was the first time she'd stopped at his door in what felt like a year, and which made it worse, somehow, because now it felt like he had to pay for it.
"Can we talk about Sunday?"
"There's nothing to talk about."
"There is, though. There's a lot. I need you to let me—"
"It's fine."
"Cal, it's obviously not fine."
"It's fine, Mom." He was doing his Spanish, or pretending to; he had written Yo tengo un hermano at the top of the page twenty minutes ago and nothing since. "You don't have to explain. You can buy him whatever you want. It's your money."
"It wasn't my—" She stopped, the way she'd stopped in the kitchen. Like she'd walked into a wall only she could see.
He looked up. "It wasn't your what?"
She stood there in the doorway with one hand on the frame. She looked very tired. She looked, he thought, like somebody holding a door closed against a wind. "I made a promise," she said finally. "To somebody. And I'm trying to figure out how to keep it and also not — also not lose you in the process. And I'm doing a bad job. I know I'm doing a bad job. I just need you to trust me a little longer."
"A promise to who?"
"I can't say."
"Right," said Caleb. "Okay." He looked back down at his homework. Yo tengo un hermano. I have a brother. "Night, Mom."