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I haven’t really been around kids since I stopped babysitting when I was fourteen, and I panic. I stare back at her with alarm, which doesn’t make things worse but definitely doesn’t help the situation. I watch her little eyes shift away from me, and up to Henry. I glance over at him, and he’s contorted his face so he resembles a monkey with startling accuracy. Lips curled inward, but cheeks puffed out, his eyes like saucers. The little girl quiets, assessing him. Suddenly, Henry pops his cheeks, making a fart sound with his mouth, and the skepticism on this little girl’s face shifts to immediate glee. She sits up in her mother’s arms, giggling, and demanding, “Again! Again!”

Henry resumes his position, and I let my eyes linger on him a little longer as he breaks the next time, laughing right along with the little girl. Her mom turns over her shoulder and mouths Thank you to Henry.

“Please, she’s doing me a favor. Lines are boring, huh?” he says, and the girl nods enthusiastically, gripping her mom’s shoulders as she swings her whole body back in agreement.

How does he do this? Be so seamlessly helpful and kind. I can’t loiter in these warm feelings that keep bubbling up for long. They make me think about waiting in lines with him at the grocery store, the movie theater, a host stand at a restaurant. All the mundane things we could do together if this were real. If this is real.

We move apart from the mom and her gaggle of children as she gets called up to the register, and Henry waves goodbye to his new little friend.

“You’re good with kids.” The underlying question is how, but he doesn’t need me to ask.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I grew up,” he says, shifting his feet so they’re parallel to mine. “It’s not that I didn’t appreciate how much my mom did as a single parent, I just had no idea. I’m sure I won’t even grasp the full extent of it until I become a dad myself, and even then, I’m not the birthing parent. I’m not the food source if—” He pauses. “If my partner decides and is able to nurse. There’s so much I can never understand, but if I see a parent struggling, I think about my mom, and how I hope people treated her. How I know a lot of times they didn’t.”

“You’re the guy bringing the stroller up and down the subway stairs, aren’t you?” I tease, but his sheepish smile tells me he’s done exactly that on more than one occasion.

“You know how her parents were,” Henry says, looking down at the floor.

When Kristine came out to her parents in college, they stopped paying her tuition. She moved to Milwaukee for a while to live with her aunt, the only remaining family member who stayed in contact with her, and later followed a girlfriend to Chicago, where she stayed until she and Henry transitioned to the suburbs, next door to us.

“She says it as a throwaway comment sometimes, how grateful she was when we arrived in Laketon, but she didn’t have a community as a mom until we moved there. I was probably older than that little girl,” he says, gesturing to his pigtailed friend who has kept eyes on him even still. “A tiny bit of kindness takes nothing from me. Why wouldn’t I try to help in any way I can?”

Henry is so serious in this moment, and I feel my heart swoop. Soon soon soon.

“You want the whole wife-and-kids shebang, then, huh?” I ask, immediately regretting the fact that we’re blazing right past friendship boundaries.

“I want a partner,” he says, his blue eyes so clear. “I want a family, but how that looks is up to her. I think I could be a good dad, even though I never really—” He stops, shifting the boxes in his arms as if he needs something to do. “I think I have a lot of love I could give to a child, whether they’re biologically mine, or we adopt.”

My hackles go up at that loaded we, but before I can spiral too much about it, Henry adds, “I saw how David was with you, with Hannah. With me. I love my mom so much. She’s everything. But the world could use more dads like yours.”

A throat clears behind us as the man at the register waves us forward, in what must not be the first time. I try to covertly wipe my eyes with the heel of my hand as we approach the counter.

I rummage through my bag for my credit card, but Henry is already returning a signed receipt. He takes the nondescript brown paper bag in one hand and reaches for me with the other. Our fingers weave together as if on instinct.

“Is this really what you do with your friends?” I ask, but he just grips me tighter. “Trevor? Or your LA buddy who has all the couch sex?”

“It’s what I always wanted to do with you,” he replies, eyes forward as we approach the car. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to talk about all of that.” He’s still not looking at me. “I’m not trying to freak you out or anything. I don’t want those things now, or even soon. Just…one day.”

“One day,” I echo quietly, slicing off a piece of my own vulnerability.

He squeezes my hand once before opening the passenger-side door and ushering me inside.

Chapter 13

I don’t see Mom for the rest of the afternoon.

Hannah and I go for a walk, exploring some of the grounds, but I can’t focus. I’m so nervous that I’m going to spill something about Henry that I basically clam up entirely, letting Hannah tell me about the nine-part murder podcast she’s been listening to in excruciating detail. I know she knows something is up because I normally have a very low tolerance for people going into too much detail about books, movies, or podcasts. Just tell me it’s good and let me see for myself. But I’m relieved when she carries on about how the dead girl’s second ex-boyfriend would have done anything for his new girlfriend, and her theory that he’s protecting this other woman who totally murdered his ex.

Kristine comes back at some point, her cheeks pink from the cold, or maybe the reflections of the sun on the snow. She plasters on a fake smile before going back into the room, and Henry shakes his head, a clear indicator that things aren’t any better.

When Kristine emerges an hour later, Henry and I exchange a look and a nod. It’s time.

“Look, Mom, I don’t know what’s going on with you and Sara,” he says, Kristine’s eyes narrowing at my mom’s name, “but we want you to know that we all love you both. I’m sure it’s a larger debacle than just the menorah, and that you’re both responsible for your own happiness or lack thereof, but we’d hate to see this all go to waste over something so small. I know she’s the love you’ve been searching for all this time,” he says, glancing sidelong at me so briefly that I might have imagined it, “so we thought this might be a small gesture to smooth things over.”

He reaches down, grabbing the plain brown paper bag and passing it to his mom. She reaches inside, pulling out the box, trying to muffle a smile.

“We thought maybe you could give this to Mom,” I say, jumping in. “It would mean a lot to her. For it to come from you.”

Kristine puts down the box, stretching out her arms and gesturing with her hands for us to come hug her. I let Henry approach first, and wait until he’s pulled away to hug Kristine myself. I can still feel his hand in mine, but I can’t afford to lose any more of my body to his touch. We’ve already close to bulldozed the line of friendship in mere hours.