“Do you need a little help deciding?” she says.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here. The guy just said, ‘Get started.’”

For some reason, this sets her off. “What do you think we’re doing, we’re packing up.” A piece of tape has stuck to her dress; her hair has come loose; she’s got a pencil behind her ear. “Anything you don’t want to take on the plane needs to go in a box.”

I look around my room—it’s a mess, but it’s also, like, my whole life.

And after a minute, Mom says, “Maybe it’s easier to start with what you need. I mean, what you want to take with you now. I’ll give you a suitcase. Don’t take too much, just what you can’t live without for the next few months.”

“I don’t really need anything. Apart from clothes.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll pack your clothes.”

You can hear the guys making noise in the rest of the apartment, talking and moving boxes around. For them it’s just a job, they’re having a good time.

“Mom?” I ask her. “What are they going to do with the rest of our stuff?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like sofas and beds.”

“It’s all going into storage. You know that this apartment doesn’t belong to us, we just rent it. I’ve discussed all this with your father. London’s expensive, too—he says there’s no point in keeping two apartments. In Austin, we can live with your grandmother, but when we get a place of our own . . . they can ship everything to us. All our old things. It’ll be like coming home.”

“What am I going to sleep on tonight?”

She looks at me, puzzled. “Your bed,” she says.

“I thought they were taking it away.”

And she smiles at me, like I’m a little kid. “Oh, honey, not tonight.” Her voice has gone all soft. “After we leave—today they’re just doing all the prep work.”

“I still don’t understand why we’re moving to Texas.”

“Ben, I thought we talked about that already.” Her voice has gone hard again. “I want you to get to know your grandmother, and she can help out, and I can go back to work.”

“It just seems like . . . the whole reason we’re . . . I thought the reason you didn’t want to go to London with Dad is because . . . this is our home. But then we’re going away anyway.”

“Do you want to go to London with Dad?”

She looks at me and there’s only one thing I can say. “No.”

“Because you know that moving to London is not really . . . Dad is going to be working all the time. We’re not gonna see him anyway. So the only reason to move to London is not really a reason at all.”

“So why didn’t you tell him to stay here?”

“I tried to say everything I could. . . . I probably said too much. Your father loves you very much. But he also loves his work, he loves being an important person . . . and sometimes, when you’re a dad, and you come home after work . . . you don’t feel like such an important person anymore. There’s nobody you can tell what to do, there’s nobody you can . . . I mean, you can try.” And she laughs a little, but she doesn’t sound happy. “He can’t really give you and me performance incentives.”