When he goes home again, without taking anything, I pick up the drone and Mr. Bursar and put them in one of the boxes. If Jake doesn’t want them, neither do I.

Five

TODAY’S THE DAY of the flight. I never sleep well if I have to wake up early. Last night I lay in bed and listened to my mom moving around the apartment. She still had a lot to do. But before she went to bed, she came into my room. I have a digital radio, which shows the time in bright red numbers. It said 11:53. I guess she thought I was asleep. I could see her looking at me.

“Mom,” I said, and she jumped.

“Oh, goodness, you gave me a shock.” Then she came over and sat down next to me, so the mattress shifted and I rolled against her. “Can’t you sleep?”

“I’m too . . . I guess, I’m too worked up.” This is what Dad always calls it. Don’t get yourself worked up over nothing, he says. You’re getting worked up. He says it to Mom as well.

“Me, too,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you sleep or not. You can just lie there. You can always sleep on the plane.” She put her hand on my hair. “Ben, you’re a tough kid.” Her hand is always bigger than I expect it to be. I could smell her perfume.

I didn’t think I’d ever get to sleep, but the next thing I know Mom is still sitting there except it’s sunny. Very white sunlight, kind of cold looking. “Time to get up,” she says.

Mom has laid my clothes out on the floor, just jeans and a T-shirt, spread out next to each other like a flat boy that’s lying on the ground. She used to do that for me when I was little, and she still does it sometimes if we have to leave the house early. I get dressed and help her carry the boxes and suitcases outside. We have to wait in the hallway for the elevator. Everybody seems to be in bed, except for the doorman, who sees us from across the courtyard and comes over to lend a hand.

“Morning, Mrs. Michaels,” he says. “Can I get you a cab?”

“Please.” So he walks out in the street to flag one down. Then he helps me load the suitcases into the trunk.

“Young man,” he says. “Now you look after your mother, you hear me?”

I smile, but I don’t say anything. There’s a fountain in the middle of the courtyard, which I used to splash around in when I was a baby. You can see the apartment building behind it, some air conditioners in the windows, but that’s not really the part of the building that I live in. I lived in. There are some plants growing around it, too. It all looks—kind of old-fashioned, like pictures of the way New York used to be. When people rode around in horse-drawn carriages. That’s the last thing I see when the cab pulls away.