There was room. There had always been room. That was the part that hurt and healed in the same breath.
They colored for twenty minutes. Aaliyah's house on paper acquired a laundry room she drew herself in the corner, small and square, with a tiny rectangle for the dryer. Elias insisted on adding a gold necklace to the stick figure in the doorway. Ruth laughed until she wiped her eyes, and if some of the wetness was not from laughter Aaliyah did not name it. When Marcus's next meeting pulled him away, Aaliyah stayed. She asked Ruth about the crossword puzzle book. Ruth said the Thursday one had been hard; she had forgotten the word for a six-letter river in Egypt and had to leave it blank. Aaliyah said, "Nile," and Ruth said, "I knew that. I knew that and then I didn't," and Aaliyah said, "I know," and for a moment they were simply two women sitting with a fact that neither of them could fix.
At four-forty-five Ruth began gathering her things with the practiced timing of a woman who had spent two years leaving before Mommy came home. Then she stopped, her hands on the beige cardigan she had folded over the chair back, and looked at Aaliyah.
"I don't have to go yet," Ruth said carefully. "Unless you want me to."
Aaliyah looked at Elias, who was putting crayons back in the box with the concentration of a surgeon. She looked at the rain on the conference room window. She looked at her mother's face—the face that had left, and returned, and was already, in small ways, beginning to leave again.
"Stay until five-thirty," Aaliyah said. "Then we'll walk out together. Elias, backpack."