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“Don’t turn away from me. I can hear you turning away.”

I smothered a laugh. “I’m not turning away.”

“You’re smiling. You get that from your father, God help you, the two of you, smiling when I’m being serious.”

And then, with no signal, no turn indicator, she was somewhere else entirely.

“The Hendersons’ boy had a baby. You know him. He’s the one who’s . . . you know . . . the way you are.”

Here we go, I thought.

“The one who’s what, Mama?”

“You know what I mean.”

I could hear her deciding whether to attempt the word, could hear her circling it the way you’d circle a wasp.

“Your . . . well . . . lifestyle.”

“You can say ‘gay,’ Mama. It’s a real word. It’s in the dictionary and everything.”

“I know it’s a word. I don’t need you telling me it’s a word. I use words all day long.”

A pause.

Then, with the effort of a woman lifting something heavy and pretending it was light,

“The Hendersons’ boy is . . . he’s that . . . gay.”

She got it out.

She sounded winded.

“And he and his . . . his friend or person or whatever you call them these days, they got a baby somehow, maybe through a surrogate. There are ways, Dante. I’ve been reading.”

“You’ve been reading about surrogacy?”

“I’ve been reading about all of it. I got a pamphlet.”

“Where does a person even get a—”

“The library has everything. Don’t interrupt your mother.” She drew in a breath that had me holding my own. “My point is, there are options. You’re not getting any younger, and neither am I. I would like, before the Lord calls me home, to hold a baby with your father’s terrible smile on my son’s—”

And here the firecracker guttered.

Just once.

Just for half a second.

Some soft, old ache moving under the noise.

Then she was over it and past it before I could speak.

“—on somebody’s face I actually like. Is that so much to ask?”

“Mama.”

“Don’t Mama me. Adopt. Foster. Buy one. I don’t care.”