"I thought you didn't know I was there."
"She knew. She told me the next day. She said, 'My youngest has better manners than my courage.' I told her manners were a start." Ruth folded the copy carefully. "Thank you for the start."
Lydia slept in her old room after moving three boxes and a stack of choir programs Ruth had not been ready to sort. The green light was gone for the year; what came through the window was ordinary streetlight and the shape of the arbor, posts dark against the yard. She lay awake and felt the house recognize her weight without granting her the deed. It was a humbling recognition. She had wanted, for an hour in a law office, to be the answer. She was not the answer. She was a daughter who could still be given a bed. Toward morning she slept, and dreamed of nothing she could use.
Mark did not go to Pruitt that evening. He drove the long way out of downtown, past the river, past the turn that would have taken him to Orchard Street, and into the lot behind his condo, where he sat until the interior light of the car gave up on him. The folded amendment was a pressure against his chest. He took it out and did not unfold it. He called his son instead, which was a strange choice and, for that reason, a true one. Evan was nineteen and lived in a dorm that always sounded like a hallway. He answered with the caution of a boy who loved his father in a narrow, well-defended lane.