"Marcus—"
"I’m not doing this in the driveway, Dani. You said it yourself. Not in front of him, and not in front of the whole street."
Across the way the porch light was still on. A curtain moved in the Okafors’ upstairs window and then fell still. Danielle closed her eyes for a second, and he watched her decide, and then she put her keys in the pocket of her jeans and turned and walked back through the garage, past the recycling bins and the bicycles and the second refrigerator where they kept the sparkling water, and into the house. Marcus followed with Caleb pressed against his side. He still had the passport wallet in his hand. He did not know what else to do with it.
The kitchen was bright and clean and smelled faintly of the lemon spray Danielle used on the counters. Everything was where it was supposed to be. The fruit bowl, the coffee machine, the calendar on the side of the refrigerator with its colored squares: Caleb, swim, Tuesday; Grandma, pickup, Tuesday and Thursday; Marcus, Chattanooga, Wed–Thurs. A plate of chicken and rice sat on the stove under a sheet of foil, and Marcus understood with a strange lurch that it had been left for him, that in the middle of whatever this was his wife had still made him a plate. On the table was a single glass of water and her phone, face up, and a pad of paper with a list on it in her handwriting. He read it upside down without meaning to. Chargers. Caleb’s inhaler. Mum’s address for the cab. Birth certificate???
He put the passport wallet down on the counter, very carefully, as if it might go off.
Then he knelt in front of his son on the kitchen tile.
It was a thing he did not do often enough, he thought later; it was a thing he had read about in the parenting books Danielle left on his nightstand, get down on their level, and had always meant to do more of and mostly forgotten. Caleb stood in front of him with his rocket-ship cuffs balled in his fists and his chin tucked down. He had Danielle’s eyes, wide and dark and long-lashed, and Marcus’s own mouth, and right now the mouth was pressed so tight it had gone pale at the edges.
"Buddy," Marcus said. "I need you to tell me something, and I need you to tell me the truth, and nobody in this kitchen is going to be mad at you. Okay?"
Caleb said nothing.