"Nana Grace has a pear tree," Caleb said. "And she has a cat named Duchess that bites." He was quiet for a moment. "Mom bought you a ticket. I saw on her phone."
"I know."
"Were you going to come?"
"I’m here, Caleb."
His son looked at him with an expression of enormous patience, the expression of a child who has been handed a non-answer by an adult and recognizes it for exactly what it is.
"That’s not what I asked," he said.
And Marcus laughed. He did not mean to. It came out of him like something breaking, half a laugh and half something else, and he put his hand over his face, and his son watched him with the solemn, interested concern of a scientist. When he took his hand away he said, "No. You’re right. That’s not what you asked."
He thought about it. He made himself think about it, honestly, the way his son deserved. He imagined the phone ringing on the passenger seat somewhere south of Dalton, Danielle’s voice saying Your passport’s with me. There’s a seat. He imagined the exit for the airport and the exit for home, coming up one after the other on the dark interstate. He imagined his mother at the kitchen table in her lavender blouse, waiting.