“Can’t you at least wait until I graduate? Then we can move. You can move.” His voice is still unreliable and he croaks on those words.

“Discussion over.”

Tony draws himself up to full height, shocking me with the fact that he is close to six feet tall. He runs a hand through his thick, dark hair in a gesture so like his father’s that I have to blink hard to dispel the notion that Anthony is standing there. “I’m not going.”

“Of course you are. You’re my son.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez will let me stay with them until I graduate.”

“I don’t think that Marta and Henry are willing or able to take on a teenage boy.” I take another lap of the turret. “It’s a ridiculous notion.”

“No, it’s not. Ask Mrs. S. She’ll tell you.”

“Why do you think they’d be willing to do this for you?”

Tony actually blushes, the roses against his olive skin making him look equally child and grown man. Petulance and desire. “They know about all our constant moving. Ten places since I was three years old. They know that’s not good. That you’ll just keep moving me until I…”

“What? Until you what?” I should remind him that the last two moves were a partially a result of his own behavior, but some things are unfair when wielded by a parent.

“Leave home.”

I take a deep breath. This is nothing more than a half-grown child’s fantasy of “I’ll run away and show you.” I know about that fantasy. Oh yes, I do.

Tony stands before me, a perfect model of anguished youth. He isn’t crying, but his mouth forms a thin line of holding back—holding back tears, or holding back very angry words; I’m not sure which. It’s like watching two entities struggling to form a single unit, the blur of the child he has been, the one I know so well, and the overlay of this almost adult, this man-child who is a stranger to me. We face each other, a gap of five feet between us. My maternal instincts are to go hug him, tell him everything will be all right, that he just has to trust me. Then the shadow of the child is gone and I see the future man standing in front of me. Not quite fully formed, but no longer a boy.

“Mom, I just can’t keep living like this.” Tears slide out from under his lashes. He makes no move to acknowledge them, just lets them drift down until they meet the scruff of beard on his adolescent cheeks and vanish.