"Then don't."
"Will you keep it if I go to college?"
"I will keep it if you go to the moon."
He laughed, and the laugh was ordinary, which made it holy.
Naomi hung the cardigan in the front closet that night after he slept. She stood looking at it for a long time. She thought of brick walls and dark curtains and a flag that had witnessed what it could not prevent. She thought of Connor's text, still saved on an old phone in a drawer. She thought of Briggs's hand and of her own voice and of every parent who had ever arrived too late or just in time. She did not make a speech to the empty hallway. Speeches were for audiences. This was for the quiet ledger she kept in her chest, where love recorded its costs and its returns without needing applause.