The cat began washing its face.
Ruth thought about Daniel’s voice. *A woman passing through is not a solution.*
She thought about May on the porch. *He doesn’t say Mama anymore.*
She thought about Eli’s arms in the dark. *”Up, Rue. Up.”*
And how she had told herself for months that stopping here was temporary, that staying was practical, that she was not building anything she would have to grieve when it ended.
She went to her room. She began, carefully, to pack her bag.
May appeared in the doorway.
She looked at the bag. She stood there for one moment. Then she turned and went down the hall, and Ruth heard Eli’s door and May’s voice low, and then footsteps returning — May’s and a smaller set, unsteady — Eli in his nightshirt with his eyes still half closed.
May set him on the floor at Ruth’s feet.
Eli looked up, still waking. His arms went up.
“Rue.”
May stood behind him. She looked at Ruth, and she waited.
Then, quietly, in the voice of a child who has used up every other word she had: “Stay.”
Just that. One word. Everything in it.
Ruth looked at the bag. She looked at Eli’s arms. She looked at May’s face, which held everything May would never say out loud. Every morning she had handed Ruth something before being asked. Every night she had stopped making the eggs first. The porch. The dark. *He doesn’t say Mama anymore.*
Ruth understood that May was not asking for May’s sake. May had been managing for fourteen months and could manage for fourteen more. May was asking because she had decided, with the full deliberate authority of a six-year-old who does not make decisions lightly, that Ruth was worth asking.
Ruth set the bag down.
The cat walked past everyone into the room and sat on the bag.
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