Marcus smiled, small and real. "Captain's still on duty."
"Captain's always on duty."
They stood together in the room that had once held a question with no air left in it. Outside, Oregon performed its late-afternoon trick of making ordinary houses look briefly like places where nothing could go wrong. Inside, Aaliyah knew better. Things went wrong. People lied out of love and fear. Mothers left and returned and left again in new ways. Marriages bent around secrets and either split or learned a different shape. Children walked through doorways wearing other people's clothes and asked if they looked fancy, and the answer was never only about the clothes.
"Marcus," she said.
"Mm."
"If he asks again why Grandma Ruth used to leave before I came home—the old days, the office days—I want us to tell him the same sentence. Not your version. Not mine. The one we practiced."