The boy had never made it off the mattress. Had been right here. Had seen it all. Over the bangs and shouts from the other side of the door, Henry couldn’t hear the boy’s voice but had no trouble reading those lips, begging him, Pa, please.

Henry looked the other way. Couldn’t let the boy see him like this, doing this.

Eventually Michelle gave up. At the sound of her storming down the front steps, Henry pressed himself up to watch her through the window. He couldn’t spot her until she reappeared, rising from a squat, having pried up a football-sized hunk of flagstone from the patio. Cradling it against her hip, she waddled over to his truck, then drove it through the passenger’s-side window. Broken glass crunched under her feet. She slammed into her car and blasted its horn. The engine turned, revved, and then she was gone.

$0.38

Henry is right here, in the driver’s seat, fists at ten and two o’clock, steering them toward the sea of parked cars and the Walmart cresting its iridescent surface like some colossal marine predator in the distance. They coast past a Winnebago setting up camp for the night, then turn into a wide channel of rear bumpers. The closer they get, the larger the blue and gray building swells, growing and growing until it towers over and sprawls around them in the truck, which he parks by the crosswalk, just steps from the entrance. The gas gauge says fumes, but he leaves the engine running. Got to take his chances. Might have to make a quick escape.

When he steps out, the asphalt gives under his boot like a trampoline. He lunges into a wobble, crawling his palms along the truck bed to keep himself upright. Really ought to dash inside and get this over with, but something tells him that a parting good-luck embrace from the boy will stabilize and center him.

But opening the passenger door looses an abyss. In Junior’s place is a dark pit, howling with the threat of finality. Before Henry gets pitched into the chasm, he clutches the grab handle, heaves himself up and into the truck, and it’s so silly. All his melodrama, his inane bent for the hopeless and finite—come on. He’s seen plenty enough to get it by now. Deep down he understands that the end of one thing is just the start of something else.

Then again, no.

Leaning over the boy, he knows at least this right here is unending, unwavering. This love is the exception, his sliver of forever. He tucks the bese saka shawl tight around Junior, huddled and shivering against the center console. Can’t be sure if he’s said he’ll be right back or not, but it doesn’t really matter because he will, because that’s his job. One last look, a silent promise, and then he closes the door, gently.