"I used to see them," she said finally. "The ones who weren't getting fed at home. Thirty years in that cafeteria, you learn. They come through the line and they're too polite. They say thank you to the tray. They put the extra milk in their backpack when they think you're not looking." She took off her glasses. "Last month, at your birthday cookout, Lulu ate three hot dogs. I said to myself, that baby's going through a growth spurt. That's what I told myself."
"Mama, don't."
"I'm not doing anything but telling you what I told myself. Because you're about to sit here all night and decide it's your fault alone, and I want you to know you got company."
Andre turned the cup in his hands. "I was gone, Mama. I was gone all the time."
"You were working."
"I was working because I liked the overtime. I liked the money. I liked coming home and somebody else had handled it." He heard his own voice crack and kept going. "After Monique, I was so tired. Two years of doing it all by myself. And then Vanessa comes along and she's organized, she's got the chore charts, she's got the kids in bed by eight, and I thought—" He stopped. "I thought, finally. Somebody's got it. I can breathe. And I just — let go of the rope."
Gloria did not tell him he was wrong. She reached across the table and put her hand over his.
"Then you pick it back up," she said. "Starting tomorrow. You don't get to pick it up yesterday. Nobody does."
He went to check on the kids before he lay down on the couch. The air mattress was empty.
His heart slammed. Then he saw: Theo was in the hall, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall outside the bedroom door, a blanket around his shoulders, chin dropped to his chest. Asleep. Sitting up, between his sister and the rest of the house.
Andre stood there a long time. Then he picked his son up — eight years old and still light enough to lift, too light, maybe, he would have to ask somebody about that too — and laid him back on the mattress and pulled the blanket over him, and Theo did not wake, only frowned and muttered something that sounded like I'm up.
In the morning Andre called his supervisor from the porch.
Hector Villanueva had run TruClean's restoration division for eleven years. He was a short, square man who chewed sunflower seeds instead of smoking and had once driven four hours through an ice storm to pull a trainee out of a flooded basement. He answered on the second ring with the sound of a generator in the background.
"Lassiter. You better be calling to tell me you're already on the road."
"Hector, I need some days."
A pause. The generator droned. "How many days?"