"I know." Her whisper was raw. "I know what I did. I know what we did. I am not asking you to bless it. I am asking you to let me be ashamed in front of you without pretending I don't love you more than I love my own breath."
He looked at her for a long time. The gold hoops. The deep brown skin. The face that had been the first face he ever loved. Somewhere under the rage a younger version of himself wanted to cross the room and put his head in her lap the way he had after scraped knees and failed tests and the night his father drove away for good. That younger self did not get a vote.
"I need time," Jamal said. "And I need him out of that house. If I come by and he's there, I will not be responsible for what my mouth does."
Angela nodded quickly, desperately. "He's gone. He left the night you did. He hasn't been back."
"Good."
"Will you come home? Eventually?"
Jamal stood. The motion ended the conversation more clearly than any sentence. "Eventually is a long word, Mom. Don't fill it with hope you haven't earned yet."
Daryl texted on the fifth day: We need to talk. Man to man. Name the place.
Jamal stared at the message until the letters blurred. Rhea, reading his face from across the kitchen, said, "If you meet him, you meet him in public. And you take your anger for a walk first so it doesn't do the talking."
He chose the park downtown where they had run bleachers in high school, where the autumn trees were already turning and the river moved slow and indifferent beyond the walking path. Late morning. Families with strollers. Joggers with earbuds. A setting too ordinary for the conversation it would hold.