She was crying again, quietly. He got up and filled the kettle and put it on the stove, because Loretta would have, because it was what you did in that kitchen at two in the morning when somebody was crying. When it whistled he made two cups of the peppermint tea Loretta used to buy in the green box, and he set one in front of his daughter, and he sat back down, and they drank their tea at the table under the stove light while outside on Whitelock Street a car went by slowly with its radio playing something old, something with horns in it, and faded away toward the reservoir.
“He’s not coming home on the twenty-ninth day,” Tasha said at last. She said it to her tea. “When he gets out. He’s going to his cousin Reggie’s in Randallstown. For a while. I don’t know how long. Until I know.”
Leon nodded.
“And Jayden sees him. But I’m there. Or you are. For a while.”
“All right.”
“And if he picks up again—”