Then again, Papa had never hit Henry’s mother. Never sent Mom to the floor, then boomed righteous and terrible over the person who’d gifted him both a son and purpose. Never dragged her by the scruff and thrown her out, never expelled her from their lives with his own two hands. No, nothing even close. Toward the end, Papa had been devotion incarnate. A walking sacrifice, a martyr preimmolation. He’d risked his job and taken unpaid leave through the entirety of Mom’s last year so he could take care of her at home, as well as chauffeuring and accompanying her to all appointments and sessions. He racked up thousands on flights and hotels to visit specialists around the country in spite of his shoestring pragmatism, in spite of the odds, in spite of the statistical certainty that he was doomed to spend the rest of his days robbed of his dearest companion and entombed in debt.

That night, after Henry’d done what Papa would never have been capable of, Junior sobbed so violently that Henry thought the boy might never stop, might wail himself to death. Gasps and screeches so vicious they threatened retching the boy’s lungs out of his chest and onto the floor, onto the very spot Henry had sent Michelle only minutes before. The boy clawed and slashed Henry away, telling him he hated him, he hated him, over and over, until he’d depleted himself entirely. As he withered, Henry inched closer, then embraced him. In Henry’s arms, the boy convulsed with weak, erratic spasms.

During that first lull, Henry would have done awful, heinous things for mere access to the right words. Words to soothe, to console. There must have been some vault, an armory storing the appropriate language to heal or at least ease the boy. Some verbal balm to remind him that however impossible it felt now, morning would come.

“Mommy’s very, very sick,” he’d said.

“Don’t you worry.

“She’ll be back. In the morning. You’ll see.

“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be fine, just fine.

“Mommy will be back.”

Henry’s breath petered out before he could remind the boy of where his father was in time and space. Regardless, the fact that Henry was right here wasn’t likely to provide any solace. And in that moment he felt so small that he couldn’t be sure if he wasn’t actually elsewhere, somewhere airless and remote, so far away that anything he might do or say would instantaneously dissipate into the vacuum of these lonely miles between them.

One more squeeze, then Henry’s embrace went slack. His shoulders slumped and fell, dragging his eyelids after them. It was dark and mossy and quiet and cold and he was scared and then, in the distance, a flicker. Something yellow.

He remembered a daffodil, a promise. A favor Mom had asked of him.