“Fine,” says Sofia. She wants to be enough for Saul. She wants her presence to draw him up and out. She wants to see herself do this, and feel like maybe she is good, after all; like there is not empty space ahead of her where a path should be. “Maybe I should go,” she says. It would comfort her to comfort him.

“Sofia,” says Saul, and there is an urgency Sofia does not recognize in his voice, “do you even care that the world is falling apart? They think thousands of people died yesterday. And it’s war, so the result of people dying will be more people dying. And each of those people is part of something. They have mothers, they have sons—” Saul breaks off abruptly. A pink flush has risen in his cheeks and his eyes are bright and animated.

“Of course I care,” says Sofia. “But I came here to escape my family, to see you, and you are acting just like them, and there is nothing I can do to reach you, like there is nothing I can do to reach anyone, to do anything. I can’t just feel so helpless, Saul. And I could go home, but my mamma would hand me a—a—a sock to knit, and I don’t think knitting a sock is helpful!”

“Okay,” says Saul. “Okay.” Patrons at other tables are watching them out of the corners of their eyes. Saul nods toward the door and he and Sofia sidle out of the bar and onto the icy street. “I think you’re right,” says Saul.

“What?” Sofia has steeled herself for a fight.

“This worrying—it doesn’t help. I just feel guilty.”

Sofia has pent-up energy now, angry anxious breath, adrenaline pumping. But she has not been offered a fight, and she does not know how to resolve it without letting it out, without screaming into the weak and wavering winter sun, without destroying everything in her path. “There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about,” she snaps, harsher than she meant.

“What kind of son wouldn’t feel guilty for abandoning his mother?”

“You didn’t abandon her,” Sofia says.

“But I did,” says Saul. The simplicity of that threatens to pull tears from Sofia’s throat. The two of them are hobbling down MacDougal to Bleecker. They are leaning in toward one another for warmth. Fingers of December air tunnel into their coats. The agony of being helpless rises in Sofia again, rakes her throat with its claws.

When Saul tries to turn right, toward Sixth Ave, where Sofia will hail a cab to Brooklyn, she stops him.

“I have an idea,” she says, but her words get lost in the layers of her scarf and Saul has to lean close and ask her to repeat herself. “Take me home with you,” she says into his ear. Her breath is hot and then freezes on his earlobe.