“Are you coming home?” Mason asked, and Derek realized the question was for him, and that the boy had been asking versions of it since the curb, and that every adult in the building had been treating it as a mood instead of a question.
“Yes,” Derek said. “I’m driving. You’re in the back. He’s coming too, if he wants. The bags can come. The airplane can leave without us and we’ll all still be in the same city tonight. That’s the plan until we make a better one.”
Mason’s shoulders dropped a fraction. He did not smile. He looked at Jonah’s duffel as if assessing whether it would fit in a life. “Okay,” he said.
Jonah stood. His eyes were red and he was angry at them, a habit Derek suddenly recognized as Lauren’s, the refusal to be seen feeling a thing even while the thing was all over the face. “I can take a bus back to the place I’ve been staying,” Jonah said. “You all don’t have to—”
“You’ve been in my city for three weeks,” Derek said. “You can be in my kitchen for an afternoon. I’m not offering you a permanent room. I’m offering you a glass of water and a true sentence. Take it or don’t.”
“I’ll take it.”