"Give me that, sweetheart."
Caleb looked up at Marcus. Marcus realized he was still holding the wallet, and that Caleb had given it to him, and that his son was waiting now to see which of his parents he was supposed to obey. It was such an old and ordinary look, the look of every child caught between two adults, and it went into Marcus like a nail.
He did not hand it over. Danielle let her hand drop. She stayed crouched, looking at her son’s bare feet on the concrete, and when she spoke again it was to Marcus, though she still did not raise her eyes.
"Because something happened today."
"What happened?"
She didn’t answer. She looked toward the end of the cul-de-sac, toward the dark mouth of the street where it met Ridley Lake Road, the way a person looks at a clock. Caleb’s hand found Marcus’s shirt and closed on a fistful of it.
"Mom said we had to leave before Grandma comes back."
The sprinklers in the Halvorsens’ yard came around in their slow arc, hissed against the mailbox, and moved on. Somewhere behind the houses a train went by on the line toward Atlanta, so far away it was more a feeling than a sound. Marcus looked at his wife.
"My mother?"