“You said a lot of short sentences. He said you told him I’m not coming.”
“I told him you had work.”
“That’s not what he said you told him.”
Mason’s fingers had gone white on the straps. Derek saw it and lowered his own voice without deciding to. The paper fluttered. He still had not opened the fold. Some superstitious part of him, the part that had grown up in a house where bad news was read slowly so it could still turn into something else, wanted the names to stay where they were until he was ready to have them. He was not ready. He was also done being the last person in his own life to know the schedule.
A car behind them honked, long and educational. They were occupying the loading lane. Derek shut the trunk. The sound it made was final in a way he resented. He put a hand on Mason’s back, lightly, the way he did in parking lots.
“We’re going inside,” he said. “All three of us. Then somebody is going to talk like a person.”
“Our bags—”