"They let us go early," Mark said finally. His voice was very quiet. "Power's back on in Pensacola. Faster than anybody thought. I drove all night. I wanted to surprise you. I figured we'd all drive down together tomorrow. I stopped at the bird store in Kettering on the way in because I couldn't wait for the shipping." He looked down at the box in his hand as if he had forgotten it was there. "I was gonna give it to him tonight."
"Mark."
"Stomach bug," Mark said.
"Mark, listen to me."
"I'm listening. I've been listening for about a minute now, standing in the garage, because I heard you say his name and I thought, she's telling her mom how excited he is. That's what I thought. I stood there with this stupid box and I was smiling." He set the box down on the kitchen table, very carefully, the way Margaret had once set down three pieces of a cake stand. "So go ahead. I'm listening. Tell me what I just heard."
Laura opened her mouth. Every reason she had built over the past three weeks, every careful item on her careful list, rose up in her throat at once and jammed there, and what came out instead was, "You don't know what it's like."
His eyebrows went up.
"You don't," she said, and now that she had started she could not stop. "You're gone. You're gone six weeks at a time, Mark, you're in a bucket truck in Texas or Florida or wherever they send you, and you call at night and he's so happy to hear from you, and you talk about birds for twenty minutes and then you hang up and go to sleep in a motel. And I'm here. I'm the one who's here. I'm the one who sits in the principal's office. I'm the one who gets the call from the swim coach saying maybe swimming isn't a good fit. I'm the one who stood in my mother's kitchen at Easter holding a broken cake plate while she told me my son wasn't welcome at her birthday."
"She said that?"
"She said she wanted a peaceful week. She said for everyone's sake." Laura's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the counter behind her. "And she's right, Mark, that's the worst part. It would be peaceful. It would be so peaceful. I could sit on a beach for one week of my life without counting the exits. Do you know I do that? Every restaurant, every store, every party, I count the exits, so I know where he's going to run. I haven't sat through a whole meal without watching his shoulders in thirteen years. I just wanted one week."
"So you were gonna leave him."
"With Dolores. He loves Dolores. He'd be fine."
"Did you ask him?"
She didn't answer.
"Did you ask him, Laura?" His voice rose for the first time. "Did you ask him if he wanted to spend his birthday across the street while his whole family was at the beach?"
The words landed in the kitchen like something dropped from a height.