“I wasn’t going to suggest that, but if that’s what you want to talk about, that’s fine.” How were they going to get out of here? Could they roll? Where would they roll? They couldn’t exactly open the front door.

“It hasn’t been good.”

“Well, sometimes, Charlie, two people just aren’t meant to—”

“To be together? That’s what the counselor said too. But then I asked her if that meant that I wasn’t supposed to be born.”

“Charlie, of course you were supposed to be born!” She scanned the room for some obvious means of freeing themselves.

“But not if Mom and Dad were never supposed to be together!”

Grandma Rose suddenly understood that Charlie never bought any of the pat answers, any of the easy outs provided by the counselor, by his mom and his dad. Or by her.

“You know what I was thinking about earlier, Grandma Rose?”

“What, dear?” she said, looking at him as if seeing him as his own person for the first time.

“The time you took me out for ice cream.”

Grandma Rose had to think for a minute. She’d taken him out for ice cream a million times. “Oh,” she said, following his train of thought. “You mean when I first came to live here?”

“Yeah.”

“That was a hard day for all of us, Charlie. I wish you could remember all the other times we’ve gone out for ice cream. The fun times, I mean.”

“I’ve forgiven you, you know.”

“Forgiven me? For what?”

“For lying to me. You said that everything was going to be fine. But it hasn’t been fine. I’ve seen Mom crying sometimes. And Dad seems lonely too. He doesn’t have any friends.”

“Your father has plenty of friends,” Grandma Rose said, resuming her search of the room. Her eyes landed on the sewing basket by her chair in the living room. “He has all those fancy parties.”

“He told me that those parties are just to get more people to buy his books. Really rich people come to his parties. They aren’t his friends, though.”

“Well, he certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem spending more time with them than his family,” Grandma Rose said. She shut her mouth, wishing she’d kept quiet. “Sorry. That probably wasn’t very fair to your father.”

“Why do you call him that? He’s my dad. You don’t have to hate him so much. He doesn’t hate you.”

Grandma Rose gave a fake laugh. “Hate is a very strong word, Charlie. I don’t hate your father.”

“Dad.”