“Then don’t leave.” Dad’s voice broke. “Stay here with me. I still have boxes of your clothes. I can buy bikes for the both of us, the best they sell, red for you and yellow for me. I’ve still got your radio. We can ride and listen to music, Jack. We can shoot our lasers. We can pedal so fast we won’t have time to remember any of the bad things that happened. We can grow up together after all! Doesn’t that sound like a dream?”

“I can’t grow up, Jimbo. Not with you. Not with anyone.”

Dad slammed his fist onto the shelf. It shook and the framed milk carton picture fell to the floor, where the glass shattered upon the hearth. Jack jumped and Blinky gasped. Dad whirled around, his face streaming with tears.

“I’m lonely up here, Jack! Stay with me. Or take me with you.”

“Jimbo…”

“Wherever you go, I’ll go; it’s what I should’ve done years ago!”

“I can’t—”

“Take me! I’m ready!”

“You’re not—”

“I’m the big brother now, Jack! You have to do what I say!”

“You’re too old!”

Jack’s shout rattled the locks upon the door and made the steel shutters hum. We stood there as the cruel echo made its excruciating exit. Dad’s taut expression of shock reshaped into folds of grief. He lifted a hand dotted with the first liver spots of old age and touched the jowls that in recent years had elongated his cheeks. The hand continued up past the worry lines carved into his forehead to the scalp that had long before given up its hair.

“Then I’m overdue,” Dad said.

Jack’s hand clenched his mask.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

We hitched up our weapons and turned toward the door.

“You’re taking Jimmy?” Dad asked. “You’re leaving me and taking my son?”

“Dad,” I said. “I have to go.”

“I forbid it,” Dad said, emboldened with the concept. “There’s danger—have you seen the news? Danger everywhere!”

“I’ll bring him back,” Jack said.

“And if you don’t? What then? You’d be tearing apart what’s left of this family. When it’s in your power to put it all back together!”

Jack paused with his tack-edged glove on the doorknob. He looked at his boots for a moment and I could see him measure the truth of what Dad was saying. That night’s mission might be one of suicide, and even if that meant a troll invasion and the destruction of the entire continent one city at a time, perhaps it was still unfair to rob a father and son of those precious last days.

“This isn’t up for debate,” I snapped. “I’m going.”

“Jim,” Jack said. “You need to think what we’re about to—”