Henry put a fried egg on toast in front of Mum, and passed her a cup of tea. For a second, she looked down at it like she had no idea what it was. She scratched at a mark on the tabletop. The egg sweated. She pulled at the film of the yolk with her fork. It stretched out like wet elastic, and I felt the bile rise in my throat, felt it closing up small. My mum hates eggs.

“I called the police,” she said. “Jude doesn’t do this. It’s out of character. I told them already. It’s all wrong.”

Novo’s hand was on my back and I reached round and held on to it. There was silence in the room for a minute, and Henry turned away from the sink and everything about him was over-careful, studied—the slow rotation of his body, his feet in their slippers, parallel, pointing forward, aligned with the checkerboard tiles on the floor. His ankles were creased and swollen, like tulip bulbs. He dried his hands on a tea towel, folded it into precise quarters. His eyes locked on to mine as he looked at Novo and me through that crack in the door, through a crack in time.

“How long have I been gone?” I said, and Novo shrugged while Mum pushed her food away, uneaten, put her finger through the hot skin of her tea.

“It’s just a Now,” he said. “You’re missing now.”

“I can’t take much more of this,” she said, and Henry put his hand on her shoulder.

“I know. I understand.”

“The only one who matters,” she said. “The only one. Smart and sensitive and creative and thoughtful. Curious. Funny. Kind. Generous. I raised that kid. I love that kid. God, Henry, I love that kid.”

She was crying again and I needed to make it stop. Reality is messy and it hurts people. Actions have consequences. Things happen and can’t be undone. I wanted to go to her and at the same time I wanted to be back in that cave where the rocks felt like velvet and I could breathe underwater and there was no such thing as time. With Novo in a perfect bubble, without cause and effect, under the radar together where nothing but Now mattered, nothing but that. But that was over. He showed me a world of endless possibilities, just like he promised, but now I was suddenly hard up against the things we had to do.

Henry was still looking at me when he said, “Jude’s going to walk through that door any minute. That’s what I think.”

I looked at Novo and he kissed me, passed his thumb across the flat of my top lip, and stepped away.

“Go on,” he said.

“What about you? Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”