The first time everything went well. It was winter. We took a Lime scooter to mine. He wanted to see where I lived. We stopped off at the Vietnamese, we got spring rolls and ginger beer. We went upstairs. I warned him it was small. He said it was really nice, he said, This is cozy, Mom. It reminded him of the apartment we lived in before because it had beams in it, because it had me in it. He said there was enough space for a poster on the wall, that he'd give me one if I wanted. I said it was his home too, that I'd give him a key. We ate at my desk then got a train to Montlouis, Montparnasse was close by. We arrived in the evening and left again the next day. We went on bike rides, we cooked, we played Uno, we read, we talked, talked about nothing, talked for the sake of it. We were together, it was nice. I left him to go and find his things, his toys, his books, his bed. We watched a politics show with my dad. There we were, the three of us, all looking the same, all talking the same, making the same comments about the TV, something languid in our tall bodies, something that comes back to me whenever I'm with them. I thought about everything I'd lost, everything that's irreparable. On the platform waiting to take the metro from Saint-Sulpice the next day, he stopped and said, Mom, can I have a hug? I took him in my arms. I thought about how he'd stop doing that in a year or so. When we got to Laurent's building, he said, You can just drop me off here. It's best if you don't come up because of Dad. He asked if we were seeing each other again in fifteen days. I said yes.

Fifteen days later, when I arrived at Laurent's place, Paul was still in bed in his pajamas. He wouldn't say a word, I couldn't get him out of bed, couldn't get him to talk to me, Laurent did nothing, I stayed there two hours, then I left. Laurent got his friends to come over as witnesses, to confirm that he had in fact opened the door to me, that he had said hello, that it was Paul who didn't want to come. I asked him if we could do things differently, if I could pick Paul up from school on Friday evenings rather than going over on Saturday mornings, he said no.