On Thursday night he came into the kitchen while she was making a grocery list for Rachel's spreadsheet and stood beside her, too close, the way he did when he wanted to say something important.
"Mom."
"Yes, honey."
"I've been practicing." He said it very seriously. "For Grandma's house. I mean, the beach house. Mrs. Pruitt helped me. We made a plan for if it gets loud at dinner. I'm allowed to say 'I need a break' and go out on the deck for ten minutes, and I set a timer, and then I come back. We practiced it at her house with the radio on really loud. I did it four times. And I'm going to bring my headphones, the good ones. And I'm going to try the food even if it touches. Not pineapple. But other things." He looked at his feet. "I don't want to break anything else of Grandma's."
Laura put down her pen.
"Eli," she said. Her voice came out strange. "That's a really good plan."
"Mrs. Pruitt said I should tell you, so you know what I mean if I say it."
"Okay."
"Okay," he said, satisfied, and went back upstairs. A minute later she heard the thump, thump, thump of his heel against the footboard.
Laura sat at the kitchen table and thought about Dolores Pruitt, who had looked at her over the tops of her reading glasses and said, you tell that boy the truth, and who had then gone home and spent an afternoon teaching him how to survive a family dinner he was never going to attend. She did not know whether it was an act of kindness or an act of war. She suspected, with Dolores, it was both.
She did not tell him Thursday night.
She would tell him Friday. After dinner. She would make his favorite, the plain chicken and the plain rice in separate bowls, and she would tell him calmly, and she would let him be upset, and she would hold him while he was upset, and then on Saturday morning she would walk him across the street with his duffel bag and his old plastic binoculars and his green notebook, and she would get in the van and drive away, and that would be that.
That was the plan.
On Friday afternoon, at ten minutes past three, Mark Delgado's pickup truck turned onto their street.
Laura did not see it. She was in the kitchen with her back to the window, her phone pressed against her ear, and on the other end of the line was her mother.
Margaret had called to confirm. Margaret always called to confirm. She wanted to know what time they would be leaving, and whether Laura had remembered the folding beach chairs Rachel had asked for, and whether Lily had a proper sun hat, because children's skin was so delicate and you saw such terrible things these days.