“No.”
I brought him a small bowl of stew and sat beside him while he ate enough to take the next dose of medication.
At seven, the baseball game began.
I lowered the brightness until the players looked as though they were competing during an eclipse and kept the volume barely above silence.
Noah settled against me with his shoulder tucked beneath my arm. Marlowe sprawled across our feet and released the sort of sigh that suggested we had inconvenienced him personally.
It should have been an uncomplicated evening.
A game neither of us cared enough about to argue over.
Warm food.
Rain ticking softly against the windows.
Noah in my arms.
But he could not settle.
He watched me when he thought I was looking at the screen. He worried his lower lip between his teeth. Twice, he opened the memory journal on his lap, stared at the empty page, and closed it again.
In the fifth inning, I muted the television.
“What is it?”
He continued looking at the frozen batter on the screen. “What is what?”
“You’ve been trying to ask me something for an hour.”
His brow furrowed. “That’s unfair.”
“How?”
“You know all my tells.”
“Not all of them.”
“You know when I’m tired. You know when I’m lying. You know when I’m angry, hungry, in pain, or about to lose a word.”
“Not every time.”
“Most of them.”
I waited.
He set the empty bowl on the coffee table.
“Leah said something yesterday.”
I already knew.
She had sent me an apologetic message that afternoon, saying she had made a joke without thinking and feared she had hurt him.
I did not tell Noah that.
The conversation belonged to him.
