Chapter 5: What Leo Heard
The drive home was quiet in a different way than before.
Not the silence of suspicion or distance.
The silence of two people who have just learned that the ground they thought they were standing on has shifted, and neither one has spoken yet because speaking would make it real.
Ivan drove.
Jessi sat with her hands in her lap, looking at the road ahead.
"There are other facilities," he said.
"I know."
"Wendy will know more options."
"I know."
"We'll call her tonight."
"Okay."
He glanced at her.
"Jessi."
"I'm not shutting you out," she said.
"I'm just thinking."
"What are you thinking?"
She turned to look at him.
"I'm thinking that Ruth has had that room for two years.
She knows the window.
She knows which floorboard creaks.
She knows the man in the apartment above her walks to the bathroom at two in the morning and she's stopped being startled by it." She looked back at the road.
"She's going to have to learn a whole new place.
And every time she has to do that, she loses a little more of what she has left."
Ivan said nothing.
There was nothing useful to say.
When they got home, Leo was already back from school, sitting at the kitchen table with his backpack still on, eating crackers and reading a book about deep-sea creatures.
He looked up when they came in.
"You're both home early," he said.
"Little bit," Ivan said.
Leo looked at his mother.
"Mom, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, sweetheart."
"You look like when Grandma d*ed."
Jessi stopped moving.
Ivan watched her absorb it — the bluntness of eight years old, the accuracy of it.
"I'm sad about something," she said.
"But I'm okay."
Leo considered this.
"Is it about the old lady?"
Ivan and Jessi both looked at him.
"What old lady?" Ivan said carefully.
"The one Mom visits." Leo turned a page in his book without looking up.
"I heard Mom on the phone once.
She was crying in the laundry room.
She thought the door was closed but it wasn't all the way.
She said, 'She didn't recognize me today and I don't know how much longer I can do this.'"
Jessi sat down at the table.
She sat down the way someone sits when their legs have made the decision before their mind did.
"Leo," she said.
"How long ago was that?"
"I don't know.
Before Christmas." He finally looked up.
"I didn't say anything because you seemed like you didn't want me to know.
I didn't want to make it worse."
Ivan looked at his son.
Eight years old, with his backpack still on and cracker crumbs on his shirt, who had heard his mother crying in the laundry room and decided the kindest thing he could do was pretend he hadn't.
"You didn't make anything worse," Jessi said.
Her voice was steady.
"You never make anything worse."
Leo seemed to accept this.
He looked at Ivan.
"Is the old lady going to be okay?"
"We're working on it," Ivan said.
"Does she have a family?"
"No," Jessi said.
"Not anymore."
Leo was quiet for a moment.
He looked back at his book, then back up.
"She has us though.
Right?"
Neither Ivan nor Jessi answered immediately.
The word *us* sat in the middle of the kitchen like something newly placed there.
Like something that had been carried a long distance and finally set down.
"Yeah," Ivan said.
"She does."
That evening, after dinner, while Jessi was on the phone with Wendy going through the list of alternative facilities, Ivan helped Leo with his homework at the kitchen table.
Long division.
Leo found it deeply unreasonable.
"When am I ever going to need this," Leo said.
"When you're helping an eight-year-old with their homework someday."
"That's not a real answer."
"No," Ivan agreed.
"It isn't."
Leo worked through the next problem.
Ivan watched him erase and start over twice without complaint.
"Dad," Leo said, not looking up from the paper.
"Yeah."
"Are you and Mom okay?"
Ivan thought about the honest answer.
The full one.
About the two years of *hi* and *good* and barely looking up from the computer.
About the eleven-minute phone call during the funeral.
About a bag of clothes under a car seat that he'd turned into a suspicion instead of a question.
"We're getting there," he said.
Leo nodded, apparently satisfied.
He moved on to the next problem.
From the other room, Ivan could hear Jessi's voice — calm, focused, asking specific questions about room sizes and staff ratios and whether the facility had a garden.
She had a notepad.
He could hear the pen.
She was fighting for Ruth the way she fought for everything she loved: quietly, completely, without asking anyone to notice.
He noticed.
When she came back into the kitchen an hour later, she had three names circled on her notepad and a fourth with a question mark.
"Wendy thinks the one in Gilbert is the strongest option," she said.
"Private room, smaller facility, lower staff turnover.
She knows the director personally."
"What's the cost?"
"Nineteen-fifty a month."
"That's better."
"It's still eleven hundred more than Ruth has."
"I know." He slid the notepad toward him and looked at the circled names.
"Can we visit before we decide?"
Jessi looked at him.
"You want to come?"
"Yes."
She took the notepad back.
Looked at it.
"I'll call in the morning."
She started to turn toward the hallway.
Then she stopped.
"Ivan."
"Yeah."
She didn't turn around.
"Thank you for coming to the office today.
Instead of just waiting."
He thought about saying something more.
Something that covered the two years.
The phone call.
The background noise.
"I should have come sooner," he said.
She nodded once.
And went upstairs.
Leo had fallen asleep at the table over his long division.
Ivan carried him up to bed, backpack and all, and stood in the doorway for a moment looking at his son's room — the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, the deep-sea creature book open on the floor, the small sneakers kicked off at different angles.
*She has us though.
May you like
Right?*
He turned off the light.
