"I'm sorry," her father said through the door. "That's not enough. I know it's not. But I'm sorry, and I'm not going to do it anymore. I wanted you to hear me say that."
Simone finished closing the zipper. She looked at the door. She thought of a lot of things she could say. *You let me lose the rug. You let me get grounded for the twenty dollars. You sat outside in the truck.* She had seen the truck, too. She had seen it through the window behind her mother's shoulder when her mother had her by the arm, and she had thought, *Dad's home, Dad's here,* and then it had sat there, and sat there.
She didn't say any of it. It sat in her chest like a stone she'd swallowed.
"Okay," she said finally. Just that.
There was a long silence on the other side. Then she heard him get up, slowly, his knees cracking, and she heard him stand outside her door for a moment longer, and then she heard him walk down the hall to Micah's room.
***
Micah was in his bed with all his clothes on, his school polo and his khaki shorts and even his sneakers, lying on top of the comforter with his face turned to the wall. The ceiling light was off and the little rocket-ship lamp on his dresser threw stars on the ceiling in slow, crooked circles.
Calvin sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped, and Micah rolled a little toward him without meaning to and then rolled back.
"Am I going to jail," he said into the wall.
"No."
"Is Mommy going to give me away?"
Calvin closed his eyes. "No, buddy. Nobody's giving anybody away."
"She looked at me like the—" Micah stopped. He was crying again, the real kind. "She looked at me like how she looks at Simone."
Calvin put his hand on his son's back, between the narrow shoulder blades, and felt the small fast breathing under his palm.
"Why'd you do it," he said. "Not the vase. The vase was an accident. I saw it, I know it was an accident. Why'd you push the ball over by the pieces?"