Marcus's jaw worked. "Would you have said yes if I'd asked?"
The question landed exactly where he meant it to land. Aaliyah felt the honesty of it and hated him a little for that honesty, because it was the kind of honesty that tried to excuse a lie by pointing at a truth.
"I don't know," she said. "But that was my question to answer. Not yours to steal."
They stood in the kitchen while the Oregon afternoon thinned toward evening. Somewhere in the house a vent ticked as the heat came on. Aaliyah thought of all the evenings she had come home from the hospital with her braids smelling of antiseptic and her shoulders tight from twelve hours on her feet, and Marcus had had dinner started, and Elias had run at her with crayon drawings, and the house had felt like the one solid thing she had ever made. She thought of how many of those evenings had begun, without her knowing, with a departure: Ruth Brooks leaving the office park, leaving the parking lot, leaving before Mommy came home.
"I need you to pack a bag," she said.
Marcus flinched. "Aaliyah—"
"Not forever. I don't know about forever. I need you out of this house tonight so I can think without looking at your face and seeing every afternoon I wasn't here." She folded the dish towel with the same precision she had used on his socks an hour earlier, before the world rearranged itself. "You can go to your brother's. Or a hotel. I don't care. Just go."