Page 44 of Protected By the Single Dad

"She told Faith she'd see her before she left town. She didn't say she was leaving. Those are two different sentences."

"I know."

"Do you?" She sighs. "Ethan. You built that rule so nobody could leave you, and then you told yourself it was for Faith, because that's easier to say out loud. I'm your mother. I'm allowed one terrible truth a decade."

It lands in me like a stone in a well. Goes all the way down.

I put both hands over my face. I stand there for a long moment with my palms against my eyes. I feel my mother's hand come to rest between my shoulder blades, very light, the way it did when I was a boy with a fever.

"Go and tell her."

"She won't want..."

"Go and tell her anyway." The hand pats me twice. "I brought a toothbrush."

I drop my hands. "You what?"

"It's in my purse. I packed it last night." She picks a fleck of lint off her sleeve, perfectly serene. "Dolores called at a quarter past eight yesterday morning, and I'm not a fool."

I laugh. It comes out cracked and strange. She smiles at me with her eyes shining. For a second neither of us says anything at all.

Faith's room is dark except for a thin beam of light moving across the ceiling. I stand in the doorway and wait. The beam wobbles, and clicks off. There's a rustle and a very elaborate silence.

"I can see the flashlight," I say.

"There's no flashlight."

"It's under your pillow."

A long pause. "It's a very small one."

I cross the room and sit on the edge of her bed. In the glow from the hall her face is a pale oval in the nest of her blankets, the fox tucked up under her chin, the damp ends of her hair curling on the pillow. She looks at me with my own eyes. She has the expression she wears when she's reading a clue.

"Carolina's gone."

"She went to her house."

"I know. She said." She picks at the fox's ear. "You have a face."