"Why only when I wasn't home?" Aaliyah asked. "If you wanted to be in his life so badly, why the secrecy? Why make my son complicit in a lie he was too young to understand was a lie?"
Ruth looked at her hands. The nails were clean. Unpainted. A small change from the Ruth who had always worn color, even when she could not afford groceries.
"Because you told me, fifteen years ago, that if I ever came near your life again you would get a restraining order," Ruth said quietly. "I believed you. I still believe you. Marcus offered a middle path that didn't ask you to break a promise you made to protect yourself. I took it because I am selfish, and because I am dying in slow motion, and because that boy laughs like you used to laugh before I taught you not to." She looked up. "I am not asking you to forgive the years I drank. I am not even asking you to forgive Marcus for keeping me a secret. I am asking whether there is any version of the next few years in which I get to be a grandmother in the open, even a little, before I forget how."
Aaliyah felt the question settle on her like weather. Outside, a child in the courtyard shrieked with laughter, and the sound came through the glass thin and bright.
"I need time," Aaliyah said.
"I have some," Ruth said. "Not as much as I'd like. But some."
Aaliyah stood. At the door she paused, her hand on the knob, and without turning around she said, "The pouch. I bought that for your fortieth."