"I went over there before dinner to get the feeders he dropped." Mark almost smiled. "She gave me a look like I was the one who'd done it. Then she told me. Said she'd been praying you'd change your mind."
He went inside. Laura sat on the garage step for a long time under the buzzing bulb. Then she got up and went up the stairs.
Eli was not asleep. She knew he wouldn't be. He was sitting up in bed with the new binoculars in his lap, turning them over and over in his hands, and he did not look up when she came in. His heel was not thumping against the footboard. The room was very quiet.
"Hey, buddy," she said.
"Hey."
She sat down on the end of the bed. He shifted his feet to make room, but he still didn't look at her.
"Eli, I need to tell you something, and it's going to be hard to hear, and I need you to know before I start that none of it is your fault."
"You didn't pack my suitcase," Eli said.
She stopped.
"Lily's is packed. Yours is packed. Dad's is packed even though he wasn't here. I saw them in the van on Wednesday when I got the jumper cables for Mrs. Pruitt." He was still looking down at the binoculars. "And you didn't ask me what shirts I wanted. You always ask me what shirts I want. And Mrs. Pruitt got weird when I talked about the trip. She kept changing the subject. And then today Dad came home and he looked at you like you were a stranger." He swallowed. "I'm not stupid, Mom. I'm bad at faces. I'm not bad at data."
Laura felt something inside her give way.
"No," she said. "You're not stupid. You're the least stupid person I know."
"So I'm not going," Eli said. It was not a question.
And there it was. She could have lied, even now. She could see it, the soft easy road of it, the story about the small house and the turns and next year. He would have believed her, or pretended to, because he wanted to. She thought of Dolores on the porch swing. What he can't handle is being lied to. Most of us can't.
"I was going to leave you here," Laura said. "With Mrs. Pruitt. I planned it. I told Grandma and Aunt Rachel. I was going to tell you there wasn't room in the house, and I was going to tell Dad you were sick. That was my plan, and it was wrong, and Dad walked in today and heard me, and I'm so ashamed of it I can hardly breathe." She made herself look at him. "It wasn't because of anything you did. It was because I was scared, and I was tired, and Grandma made me feel like I was a little girl again, and I let her. That's all it was. That's the truth."
Eli was quiet for a long time. He ran his thumb along the rubber ridge of the binoculars, back and forth.
"Was it because of the cake plate?" he asked.
"No, sweetheart."