Inside Jonah’s apartment, she stared down at the dried patch of it, a circle that probably wasn’t any bigger than her hand. Still, it chilled her, seeing it there, bringing to mind the way Jonah had looked this morning, as though he’d taken a terrible beating. She’d wanted to ask Will about that—the darkness of the bruising, the way it’d seemed to take up so much space even though Jonah had sworn he’d only struck the edge of his brow when he’d gone down.

She shook her head, frustrated with herself. It didn’t matter. She should clean this up, pack Jonah’s bag, get moving so she could get back there. She knew Mrs. Salas would want to go with her, could smell the aroma of her baking all throughout the building, and thought she must’ve been making Jonah’s favorites. Benny, too, was planning to head back today; she’d seen him in the hallway on the way up, had ignored the quizzical look he’d given her as she’d insisted on dragging her suitcase up the steps entirely by herself.

Within minutes she was on her knees, scrubbing gently at the stain and blinking back the tears that kept stubbornly pressing behind her eyes. When she thought she’d mostly handled it, she stood, dumping the bucket of water into Jonah’s tub, averting her eyes even when she rinsed her sponge. She stripped off her gloves and looked around. Should she try to tidy up? Make his bed so that when he came back—

She swallowed, flushing with heat.

It’s a third-floor unit, Will had said to the doctor, so plain and so technical, and it had felt like having the wind taken out of her once again, when she wasn’t even recovered from seeing Jonah there, and like that. The worst of it was, she’d spent the next few minutes trying to get her breath back, trying to remind herself that Will was only saying what was true, even if she’d hated the way he’d said it.

Even if she’d hated when he’d said it.

But it’d been beyond her, to breathe right again, to think straight again. I’m overreacting, part of her wanted to say, the same way he’d said to her last week, but she’d locked up, her mind like a thunderstorm: Nonna gone, Donny gone, Donny not even the nice man she’d always thought he’d been. Deepa leaving Verdant, Austin leaving San Diego. Nora’s bathroom not like it’d always been; Nora thinking she might leave Verdant, too. Jonah in rehab. Jonah somewhere else altogether. She’d looked across the room at Will and suddenly it was like he was the wind that had been taken out of her; gusting through and blowing things apart. It didn’t matter that she knew it wasn’t really true; it didn’t matter that she knew she was being unfair.

She’d still asked him to go.